Italy is now in a unique strategic position to become the bridge between Europe and Africa for reasons that are not only geographical, but also geopolitical, economic and infrastructural. Italian ports – Gioia Tauro, Naples, Trieste – are already protagonists in the Mediterranean, but they are not yet exploiting their full potential. We need a qualitative leap: vision, investments, alliances.

The proposal we are putting forward is ambitious and complex: to transform the Mattei Plan into a real financial and logistical platform at the service of Euro-Afro-Mediterranean development. In synergy with the European Global Gateway and the Green Deal, Italy can lead a new season of pragmatic and balanced cooperation.

400 million people live in the southern Mediterranean. It is an area of demographic and economic growth, with a growing GDP and an increasingly strong demand for infrastructure, energy, logistics and employment. In the North, Europe faces challenges of stagnation and ecological transition.

The convergence between these two realities is not only possible, but necessary.

Italy, due to its history and position, is the natural candidate to facilitate this convergence. But the logistical advantage is not enough. We need a financial infrastructure capable of accompanying and guaranteeing projects. Hence the idea of an Afro-Mediterranean Development Bank: an institution dedicated to financing port infrastructures, intermodal networks, local SMEs and cross-border projects.

This bank, repeatedly proposed in the spirit of financing the development of the Bretton Woods Multinational Institutions, would be a concrete response to the real and increasingly pressing need for a financial instrument of stabilization, growth and inclusion. It would offer guarantees to private individuals, reduce country risk and unlock public and private capital.

In this context, the structural issue of African public debt, which is holding back investment, development and inclusion, must also be addressed. The proposed bank can promote a facility inspired by the Brady Plan, to restructure African debt through innovative instruments: debt exchanges with productive investments, bond issues guaranteed by multilateral institutions, public-private compensation funds. Such a mechanism would not only lighten the debt burden, but would free up resources for health, education, infrastructure and innovation.

But infrastructural development must go hand in hand with human development. The

construction of shared human capital is the true invisible infrastructure of the Afro-Mediterranean future. Italy can promote a network of universities, technical institutes and applied training centers in collaboration with African partners, to train new generations of professionals, technicians, managers and innovators. Educational and professional mobility can become a strategic axis of cooperation.

At the same time, an Afro-Mediterranean welfare system must be built that accompanies economic integration with rights, protections and services. A shared labour market needs social security, health protection, gender equality, youth inclusion. Here too, Italy has models, skills and tools to make available in a logic of co-development.

The Mattei Plan can thus become the basis for developing a wide-ranging international initiative by taking the form not only of a political container, but of an operational platform: multilevel, multi-country and multidimensional. A diplomatic and financial infrastructure capable of involving European, African and international actors.

Global competition is already underway. China, the USA, the EU are investing hundreds of billions in strategic connectivity: BRI, PGII, Global Gateway. If Italy wants to count, it must act now. With determination, with method, with partnership. Over the next ten years, this strategy can generate employment growth, stability and sustainable development. Betting on the Mediterranean is not just an economic choice. It is a political, environmental, cultural choice. It is investing in shared

security, in widespread prosperity, in cooperation between shores.