30 September 2026
Emma Gentili
Strategy, Narrative, or Practice? The Migration Component in the Mattei Plan
A few days ago, a Lombardy delegation visited Kenya to present the Agripact project aimed at strengthening cooperation and sustainable development with African countries. The Undersecretary to the President of the Lombardy Region Raffaele Cattaneo, stated that the project belongs to an effort to create jobs in Kenya, presenting an alternative to migrating out of the country.
The project is part of the broader Mattei Plan, which seeks to address migration by promoting local development and creating sustainable economic opportunities within African countries. During Giorgia Meloni’s opening address at the Italy-Africa Summit in January 2024, the Italian Prime Minister talked about implementing new forms of development cooperation between Africa with Italy and Europe, specifically following a non-predatory logic and long-term approaches aiming for mutual interests.
It is in this context that Meloni launched the Mattei Plan, a four-year renewable engagement cooperation plan in Africa, named after ENI’s founder Enrico Mattei, allegedly murdered in 1962 for countering the American monopoly of the global oil-market.
Mattei, a supporter of anti-colonial movements who became a symbol of Italian solidarity with Africa, is the figure the government invoked to promote a plan that claims to reinvent African and Italian relations. After arguing against the myth that Africa is a poor continent, and stating the economic strategic importance of European and African relations, Meloni makes this brief, but sharp, comment on migration:
“Illegal mass immigration will never be stopped, human traffickers will never be defeated, unless the root causes that drive people to leave their homes are addressed. This is precisely what we intend to do, […] , by offering African populations an alternative of opportunities, work, training and legal migration paths.”
Meloni’s unusually progressive language on cooperation with Africa stands out: she emphasizes distancing herself from Europe’s predatory approaches to its relations with Africa.
This stance is at odds with her repeated refusal to formally apologise for Italy’s colonial war crimes in the Horn of Africa during the early twentieth century, as well as with recent proposals to limit the number foreign students in high schools.
It is not surprising however, how in discourse around the Mattei Plan, the government circles back to the question of immigration.
The plan, through a developmental approach, is framed as a strategic tool for migration containment, but when delving into its structure, this does not appear to be a core pillar of its means and objective. This framing of the Mattei Plan serves as a rhetorical device to build consensus both within the EU and among African partners, as well as a strategy for Italy to position itself at the forefront of a new European approach to relations with Africa.
The Mattei Plan is presented by the Italian government as a project of mutual interests, shifting from the “donor-beneficitary” paradigm that long defined the European approach in development projects in Africa.
Its intervention spheres are education, health, water, agriculture, energy, fiscal and digital infrastructures, and the pilot projects took place in nine countries, four of which in North Africa and five in Sub-Saharan Africa. The initial funding counted five billion and five hundred million euros, mainly originating from the Italian Climate Fund and the cooperation budget. Its activities are determined by a council of ministers chaired by Meloni, whose responsibilities include coordinating collaboration with African states, overseeing the execution of projects, and drafting an annual report.
Furthermore, the Mattei Plan was conceived as a tool for Italy to further its interest within the EU, and this is done through collaboration with the Global Gateway, a strategy launched in 2021 by the EU commission to finance infrastructure and development projects in partner countries, mainly through investments in Africa. It has a geostrategic role: its projects engage with the European private sector to consolidate EU economic influence and counter the rising influence of China in the continent. The initiative partially funds the Mattei Plan, for instance the Lobito Corridor project: the development of a railway between Angola and Zambia to which it allocated 600 million euros.
This represents a convergence of Italian and European interests in cooperation with Africa, as both view the externalization of migration management, namely the effort to push migration control beyond one’s own borders, as a beneficial approach.
Meloni, who does not have a long-lasting reputation of being a fervent EU advocate, repositions herself as a leader of EU cooperation and development in Africa. In parallel, the plan seeks to benefit Italian private companies, who are the main implementing partners.
While this represents an economic gain for Italy, this is unlikely to also substantially benefit African enterprises. Italian companies are paid to monitor the Plan’s risks, limiting the possibility of expanding decision-making to local firms, as one might expect if there were a genuine commitment to advancing the interests of local companies.
This prioritization of Italian interests appears to contradict the principle of equal and mutually beneficial cooperation that the Plan upholds.
The Plan’s rationale and implementation is fundamentally political, and its institutional support closely tied to the framing of it as a response of migration flows, Meloni’s sovereignist right-wing government won the elections largely by campaigning on the issue of migration, and now it has to maintain the support by showing commitment to enforcing border control.
The role of migration in the Mattei Plan appears to be simultaneously central, as it is overstated in Meloni’s discourse, and peripheral, as none of the Plan’s projects directly involve migration management. Despite this, even if the Mattei Plan’s migration dimension is primarily political propaganda, form remains substance.
If the Plan receives support from institutions and Italian voters because of Meloni’s framing around migration, this allows it to develop in the first place. This is part of a broader dynamic in which migration control and management are used to frame development initiatives, allowing the government to present the Mattei Plan as a tool for addressing migration while applying its label to projects largely implemented by Italian private companies, despite the uncertain effectiveness of these initiatives in achieving their stated objectives. As such, Meloni’s decolonial language, used to promote the Plan, reveals itself rather as a symbolism polishing xenophobic approaches to migration with developmentalism, while simultaneously promoting a fully made-in-Italy agenda.