Italy pitches $5.9bn development plan to curb migration from Africa
Prime Minister Meloni hosts dozens of African leaders and diplomats at summit in Rome
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni yesterday pitched her flagship development plan to African leaders, offering them billions of dollars to raise living standards in their countries to prevent people from travelling north to Europe.
Ms Meloni addressed dozens of African leaders and diplomats including Tunisia’s President Kais Saied, the prime ministers of Libya and Morocco and ministers from Egypt and Algeria, at a summit in Rome.
Promising to help Africa benefit from its vast natural resources, Ms Meloni set out her vision for a “partnership of equals” that steers away from a colonial-era “predatory” mindset but also turns its back on a “charitable posture”.
She offered a promise of €5.5 billion ($5.95 billion) of investment, to come from a range of sources including loans, grants and guarantees on existing Italian climate and development funds.
Italy, which is using its current presidency of the G7 to push its Africa agenda, hopes to tackle the causes of Mediterranean migration, which brings tens of thousands of people to Italian shores every year.
Ms Meloni was elected on an anti-migration platform in 2022, leading Italy’s most hardright government since the Second World War. However, she has struggled to bring down the number of people crossing the Mediterranean.
More than 150,000 people arrived in Italy from across the
Mediterranean last year, the most since 2016, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR. Many had travelled from West African countries such as Guinea and Ivory Coast.
About 1,900 were reported dead or missing.
“We want to free up African energy to guarantee younger generations a right which to date has been denied,” Ms Meloni said.
“Because here in Europe we talk a lot about the right to emigrate, but we rarely talk about guaranteeing the right to not be forced to emigrate.” African leaders broadly welcomed the goal of stemming emigration to Europe while stressing that Ms Meloni’s words must be matched by actions.
African Union Commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat said he would have liked more consultation in advance.
Morocco said the summit “represents an opportunity to strengthen the foundations of this relationship”, including food and energy security, economic development and managing illegal migration.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen called for a “moment of intense and renewed co-operation between Africa and Europe” as she backed what Italy calls the Mattei Plan.
“We must crack down on smugglers who trade on human life. Smugglers put hundreds of thousands of lives in peril,” said Ms von der Leyen.
She said co-operation with
Africa should include legal migration routes, on which Ms Meloni has softened her tone.
“We offer more opportunities to come to Europe legally so that people can move, learn and bring their new expertise back home. And we co-operate on the return of irregular migrants because mobility must be managed by law, and not by the smugglers,” Ms Meloni said.
An EU deal on migration aims to strike a compromise with countries such as Italy by asking other countries to share the burden of accommodating migrants in return for tougher measures at the bloc’s external borders.
Italy also plans to put migration high on the agenda when leaders of the G7 countries meet this summer in Puglia.
The venue for the G7 summit is near where many migrants arrive after travelling on flimsy boats from North Africa.
Italy is using its G7 presidency to tackle the causes of Mediterranean migration and reduce the number of crossings