Italian cooperation in the ”era” of the Mattei Plan: new offices in Ivory Coast and Uganda

Marco Riccardo Rusconi, director of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (Aics), participates in the Codeway Expo meetings

ROME – “Ten years ago the words business and cooperation would have seemed like a crazy oxymoron”, smiles Marco Riccardo Rusconi, director of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (Aics). We are at Fiera Roma, in Pavilion 8: Codeway Expo has begun. They shake hands, a few meters from a Burkina Faso flag and the installation ‘Uncompleted flag’, recycled materials to embrace all the nations of the world. Those who meet are representatives of institutions, leaders of civil society organizations and also, perhaps above all, managers and entrepreneurs. “Ten years ago the very noble actors of development cooperation and the very noble actors of the private sector would have looked askance at each other”, underlines Rusconi. His is a look at the present and the future. On one condition, which is at the same time an ideal reference and a daily commitment: never take your eyes off the Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

THE PUBLIC HERITAGE AND THE ROLE OF THE PRIVATE PARTIES

“There is a heritage of cooperation that is public”, says the director, mentioning Aics, the Farnesina or Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (Cdp). “However, there is an asset for which the need remains: innovation and creativity, something that companies can bring, offering a decisive contribution that becomes a factor of development”. We also talk about national specificity and excellence. “The German cooperation agency is ten times larger than Aics”, reports Rusconi, “but it asked us to go together in some territories because there are countries that resemble Italy and to which the ‘Italy resembles’. The reason? The answer is another question, this time rhetorical. “In your opinion”, asks the director, “a country that is developing will have as its model a country that has large industrial conglomerates or another that instead has five or six million companies like Italy?”

One of the examples is Ethiopia, a giant in the Horn of Africa, also emerging on a demographic level. “In this country there are millions of family businesses that work in the coffee sector”, underlines Rusconi. “It is similarities like these that help Italy present itself as a model.” In the foreground, in the Codeway Expo panels, organised by Fiera Roma together with Internationalia, there is the sharing of skills. “It happens that today Africa imports shoes and then it is clear that there is a need to strengthen that sector”, says Rusconi: “Italy has a lot to offer and I am also thinking of other needs, perhaps green hydrogen engineers, so necessary due to the strategic choices that the African countries themselves are making: last September, the Kenyan president William Ruto underlined that his country wants to be an engine of the global green economy”.< /p>

THE TOOLS AVAILABLE

The Italian cooperation system makes multiple tools available. “I am thinking of the tenders addressed to territorial authorities, which do not exclude companies but call for partnership, so that everyone does what they know how to do”, underlines Rusconi. “Then there is a for-profit tender, designed for the world of private businesses: the mechanism provides that if you present a business project that has a cooperation logic because it includes a transfer of skills, it recognizes the dignity of work and it has other prerequisites, for every euro you put in we put in another.”

WITH THE AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

This is a formula that could be replicated and spread. This is confirmed by the news that two new Aics offices should be inaugurated in Africa within a year. “We are opening in Ivory Coast, where the African Development Bank is based”, announces Rusconi, “and soon we will also open in Kampala, Uganda”. Meanwhile, accompanying Codeway, which runs until Friday, is a quote from the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. “He said that cooperation is a collective heritage of the national community”, recalls Rusconi, “because in each of its actors there is a component that pushes towards cooperation”. Institutions, civil society, socially responsible companies: this is the promise at Fiera Roma, we want to close a circle.