Presidents, Prime Ministers, Authorities, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honor for me to welcome you here today in Addis Ababa for the second edition of the Italy–Africa Summit. This is the first time in history that this Summit is being held on the African continent, and it is clearly not a случай choice, but proof of the centrality and importance that my Nation attaches to its relationship with all of you.
Allow me to thank my friend, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, for the warm welcome and the valuable cooperation in organizing this Summit. This meeting takes place on the eve of another equally solemn moment, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union, at which I will have the honor of speaking tomorrow. I also thank President Youssouf and President Lourenço for the invitation, as well as for the support that the African Union has always guaranteed us over these years.
Two years ago, when I had the honor of hosting you in Rome, we made a very ambitious commitment: to write a new chapter in the history of our relations and to build a completely different model of cooperation, founded on trust and mutual respect. Cooperation among equals, far from any predatory temptation, but also far from the paternalistic approach that for a long time characterized relations between Africa, Europe, and the West, and often prevented our Nations from understanding the extraordinary uniqueness—and above all the extraordinary potential—of African peoples.
Since that Summit two years ago, these have been years of intense but also concrete and effective work. Years in which we have shaped the Mattei Plan for Africa, anchored it in our institutional systems, and developed it to the point that today it is recognized not merely as an Italian initiative but as a strategy of international scope. This has been possible thanks to the structured synergies we have built with the main United Nations agencies—whom I thank, including Secretary-General Guterres—as well as with the European Union, the African Union, the G7, and the many partners who share our vision, from Europe to the Gulf, passing through East Africa.
In doing so, we dare to believe that we are contributing to revolutionizing the way Africa is viewed—and consequently how action in Africa is undertaken.
Today the Mattei Plan is an operational and structured reality that generates tangible results for our peoples, supported by a solid and innovative financial architecture born from the valuable cooperation we have established with the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the main international financial institutions. Over these two years we have launched and completed concrete projects of major social impact, mobilizing billions of euros in public and private resources.
We have done this by giving substance to a method that involves the best energies of the Italian people, a team effort that mobilizes the entire “Sistema Italia,” partly represented here today and which I thank: companies, universities, the world of cooperation and research—a wealth of excellence working in a coordinated way toward a common goal. That goal is not simply to implement a package of projects, but to shape a pact among free Nations—us and you—that choose to work together because they trust one another and can identify together the areas of cooperation where we can make a difference, in a perspective of shared benefits.
It is a method that builds concrete solutions, is implemented rapidly, and generates verifiable benefits, especially in strategic sectors for our common growth. I am thinking of energy, where we have chosen to focus on interconnections between the different shores of the Mediterranean and on the development of renewables and biofuels, in full respect of the principle of technological neutrality, which is essential for an ecological transition that is sustainable and compatible with our economic and productive systems. We have created a new public-private paradigm in another pillar of our cooperation—food security—supporting local supply chains, generating quality employment, and promoting technological innovation and access to water. We have strengthened cooperation in physical and digital infrastructure across various regions of Africa, because without connections there is simply no growth and no integration with global markets. We have collaborated in the health sector to make systems stronger and more accessible. We have worked on industry, employment, and private-sector development, with particular attention to young people.
Every project of the Mattei Plan is linked by a common thread: attention to education and training. Our objective is not to create new dependencies but to support the protagonism of African peoples and build opportunities for renewal. This is possible only by placing the development of human capital at the center, starting from the earliest years of schooling. That is why Italy launched, together with Nigeria and in partnership with the Global Partnership for Education, a campaign to raise 5 billion dollars to improve the quality of education for 750 million children in more than 91 countries. On this topic I will be pleased to co-chair a Summit in Rome in June together with President Tinubu. This is our approach, because the challenge of a completely new cooperation is based above all on enabling Africa to live from its own wealth—processing its raw materials rather than allowing them to be plundered, cultivating its fields, providing jobs and prospects for its best energies, and relying on stable governments and dynamic societies. We are not interested in exploiting migration to obtain low-cost labor for our production systems. Instead, we want to tackle the root causes that push too many young people to leave the places where they were born and raised, preventing them from contributing to the progress and development of their Nations. It is a choice of shared responsibility, not of short-term convenience.
We have done all this by following a method that does not stem from the arrogance of those who impose pre-established models from above, built elsewhere and insensitive to the needs of African peoples, but rather builds solutions together with humility and respect.
However, the goal of this Summit is not to celebrate what has been achieved so far, but to reflect together on what we can do to make the Mattei Plan more effective, more concrete, and more responsive to the needs of local communities. Because if there is one thing we have learned in these years, it is that the success of this initiative also depends on our ability to keep listening, to be willing to adjust course when necessary, to adapt, and even to learn from the mistakes we may make. Drawing on African wisdom, “no path is traced without encountering stones.” But it is thanks to those stones that we can walk; it is thanks to those stones that we can move forward.
We want to continue in this direction with the awareness that the results we have achieved are not the finish line. They are seeds necessary to generate a new harvest, richer and more abundant. If we maintain this approach and this perspective, I am convinced that together, each in our respective roles, we can help make concrete the lesson given to us by a giant of our time, Saint John Paul II, who said: “We are all truly responsible for all.”
This is our approach. This is what moves us. And above all, this is what we want to continue to do.
So thank you to all of you for what we have built over these years. But even more, thank you for being here today, showing that we want to continue together to carry this work forward.
Thank you, and I now give the floor to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, my friend Abiy Ahmed Ali.
