Under the Mattei Plan, Rome is funding research centers and joint degrees with African universities, promising “balanced” partnerships that also advance Italy’s own interests.
In Sidi‑Bel‑Abbès, a provincial city in northwestern Algeria, Italian and Algerian officials filed into a university auditorium as engineering students hovered over laptops displaying soil‑moisture data and satellite imagery of wheat fields.
Outside, a banner announced the upcoming Enrico Mattei Center for Agricultural Technologies, a new training and research hub for agriculture and emerging technologies in food security.
The center, being developed with Italian support, is one of the clearest signs yet of Italy’s Mattei Plan for Africa, a flagship initiative that promises to move relations “from aid to partnership” through investment, infrastructure, and, increasingly, higher education.
In practice, it is turning African universities into a key arena for Italian diplomacy, blending science, development, and geopolitical strategy.
At its core, the new push raises a question that goes well beyond one campus: Can Italy’s academic outreach under the Mattei Plan deliver the “balanced” cooperation it promises, or will it simply repackage old asymmetries in a new, university‑shaped form?
Background and Stakes
The Mattei Plan, launched in 2023 and named after Enrico Mattei, the postwar founder of the energy giant ENI, was billed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a way to recast relations with African countries around co‑investment and mutual benefit.
Officially, the plan focuses on five broad pillars: energy, agriculture, water, infrastructure, and education.
In higher education, Italy is “reaching out to African countries to build strategic and balanced educational and scientific research partnerships” as part of the Mattei Plan, according to a March 2026 analysis in University World News.
Experts quoted in that piece describe the approach as science and academic diplomacy, soft power aimed at supporting Africa’s higher education development while also serving Italy’s political, cultural, and economic agendas.
The scale of existing ties is already significant. Italian universities have signed hundreds of academic agreements and launched more than 250 joint projects with African partners across seven strategic areas: health, education and training, agriculture, water, energy, infrastructure, and culture, according to Italy’s Conference of University Rectors.
Its president has called the Mattei Plan a “unique opportunity” to strengthen “educational collaboration and scientific diplomacy” with African countries.
For Rome, these partnerships are more than altruism. Analysts at Italian and European think tanks argue that the Mattei Plan is also about securing energy supplies, managing migration, and positioning Italy as a bridge between Europe and Africa, amid intense competition from China, France, and the Gulf states.
Human Stories and Real‑World Examples
In Sidi‑Bel‑Abbès, the Mattei Center is being developed through a twinning agreement between Italy’s University of Tuscia and Djillali Liabès University, part of what local officials describe as a long‑term partnership.
The facility is intended to serve as a regional hub for training engineers and scientists in precision agriculture, artificial intelligence, and green computing, to boost food security in Algeria and neighboring countries.
According to University World News, the center is expected to support a wider initiative by a group of African nations to build a shared ecosystem for green computing, data, and talent aligned with the African Union’s Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy.
The idea is to keep more of the data, expertise, and value generated by AI and digital tools within African institutions, rather than relying entirely on foreign platforms.
Beyond Algeria, the Mattei Plan’s education pillar includes scholarship schemes and joint doctoral programs.
For the 2025–26 academic year, Italy has expanded fully funded opportunities for African students at undergraduate and doctoral levels, with an emphasis on fields such as renewable energy, agriculture, artificial intelligence, and water management.
The rectors’ conference has proposed new joint Ph.D. programs and adult training courses for African managers and civil servants, arguing that these can foster “egalitarian collaboration and common growth” if carefully designed.
For African students and academics, the opportunities are tangible: access to Italian labs and funding, co‑authored research, and pathways to advanced qualifications that might previously have required moving to London or Paris.
But the same partnerships can also pull scarce talent toward Europe, or align research priorities more closely with Italian or European agendas than with local needs.
Policy, Debate, and Expert Views
Italian officials present the Mattei Plan as a break with past paternalism. Foreign ministry documents describe it as a pilot project for equal‑footing cooperation, and the government has convened a steering group that includes universities, development banks, and private investors.
At a March 2026 conference at the Bank of Italy in Rome, officials framed university partnerships and centers of excellence as critical to “laying the groundwork for jobs in Africa,” alongside infrastructure and finance.
African and international analysts are more cautious. In a 2025 paper titled “The Mattei Plan for Africa: From Aid to Partnership?”, the Italian Institute for International Affairs argued that while the rhetoric of partnership is welcome, the plan “remains marked by Italian priorities, particularly on energy security and migration management,” and risks reinforcing Italy’s leverage in negotiations over gas and migration control.
A separate report from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs asked, in its title, whether the Mattei Plan was “mirage or reality.”
Higher‑education experts echo that ambivalence. One African science‑policy specialist quoted in University World News called Italy’s approach “science diplomacy anchored in institutional partnerships,” noting that helping African universities establish centers of excellence in renewable energy, agriculture, food security, and AI can build local capacity and encourage scientists to stay.
But he and others also stress that these centers must be embedded in national strategies, not just donor‑driven agendas, if they are to avoid reproducing dependency.
Another commentator, who heads a higher‑education foundation in North Africa, has argued that “Italy’s engagement with Africa under the Mattei Plan combines developmental ambition with strategic calculation.”
While partnerships in higher education can genuinely strengthen African human capital, he said, they also align with Italy’s interests in energy security, geopolitical positioning, and migration management.
What Comes Next
For now, many African universities and governments are embracing the opportunities. The African Union has pledged to make the Italy–Africa partnership a model of balanced cooperation, and ministers have highlighted the role of university alliances in building the skills needed for the continent’s green and digital transitions.
Italian universities, for their part, say they are keen to move beyond one‑off projects toward long‑term, co‑designed programs.
Whether the Mattei Plan delivers on its promise will be measured less in memorandums of understanding than in the careers of students like those in Sidi‑Bel‑Abbès: whether they end up using AI tools to improve yields on local farms, or mainly feeding data to agritech companies abroad.
It will depend on whether African partners can shape research agendas, retain talent, and secure funding that lasts beyond political cycles in Rome.
In lecture halls from Algiers to Nairobi, Italy’s bet on universities is already changing what an Africa–Europe partnership looks like. The open question is whose future these new centers of excellence will ultimately serve, and who will get to write the next chapter of the Mattei Plan’s story.
