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The Africa Confidential Blog
Meloni’s ‘Mattei’ plan
Blue Lines
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has invited five African heads of state, as well as AU commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat, to next week’s G7 summit in Apulia. This meeting comes a week after South Korea’s first Africa Summit at which 48 governments were represented and some US$24 billion in trade and investment was promised.
Diversifying energy supply and migration control are priorities for Meloni, which explains the presence of leaders from Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia. Within the context of Meloni’s new ‘Mattei’ plan, we can expect some new offers to Africa.
Kenya’s William Ruto has been campaigning for more ambitious financing and debt restructuring. Ahead of the summit, he has urged G7 leaders to ‘demonstrate solidarity with Africa’ with greater concessional and longer-term development financing. That means agreeing to reallocate the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights reserve currency to the African Development Bank, and committing funds to the World Bank’s International Development Association.
Some of that could bear fruit next week, though talks on debt restructuring are unlikely to be substantive. President Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says that leaders ‘will also redouble commitments to support developing countries seeking to make investments in their future and to help strengthen food security and health financing.’