Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, at the G20 leaders' summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 23, 2025. GIANLUIGI GUERCIA / AFP
Two years after the first Italy-Africa summit, which was held in Rome in early 2024, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government has continued to assert its major ambitions for the African continent. Another diplomatic meeting is set to be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Friday, February 13, followed, the next day, by a speech from the Italian leader, who will be the guest of honor at the 39th Ordinary Session of the African Union.
This latest Italy-Africa summit was announced less than a month in advance, and the Italian government has presented it as a key step in implementing its proactive strategy of cooperation with African states. Neverthless, it is expected to be relatively brief, with the proceedings beginning at 6 pm, and the number of national leaders present is as yet undetermined.
When she took office in October 2022, Meloni set out the broad strokes of her new approach, which was initially designed, as the phrase that was popular at the time put it, to "address the root causes" of migratory flows running from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. Meloni was elected after pledging to stop migrants from arriving to Italy's shores by sea, in particular on the island of Lampedusa. Her ambition came with the promise of "peer-to-peer" and "non-predatory" relations.
