Italy's Mattei plan: A new chapter in Africa's development or a colonial echo?

style="font-weight: 400;">described Ethiopia as a “special partner” and the Horn of Africa as a strategic priority for Italy’s engagement in Africa. Italy signed a Comprehensive Plan of Action with Eritrea, expanded cooperation with Somalia on security and development, and concluded an Ethiopian-Italian Cooperation Framework covering agriculture, infrastructure, economic growth and peacebuilding.

However, Italy’s outreach remains overshadowed by its unresolved colonial legacy — particularly its continuing refusal to acknowledge or atone for the atrocities committed during its colonisation and occupation of the region.

Between 1882 and 1941, Italy waged a brutal campaign of conquest and occupation across the Horn. Eritrea, colonised in 1890, became the first and longest-held Italian colony. The fascist regime entrenched racial hierarchies and economic exploitation through land expropriation, forced labour and cultural suppression. Thousands of Eritreans were forcefully and systematically conscripted into the colonial army as askaris and deployed in wars in Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia. 

Resistance leaders were imprisoned under inhumane conditions in the remote islands of the Dahlak Archipelago, where detention was tantamount to a death sentence. Others were executed or exiled, and entire communities were displaced as fertile lands were seized for Italian settlers, causing widespread social and economic dislocation.

Similar exploitation

Somalia endured similar exploitation. By the 1920s, Italian Somaliland had been transformed into a plantation colony dependent on forced labour and land confiscation. Thousands were compelled to work under brutal conditions on banana and sugarcane plantations to sustain Italy’s export economy.

Resistance was violently suppressed, and many detainees were sent to concentration camps, where thousands died from starvation, disease and overwork. Cloaked in the rhetoric of civilising the region, these policies dismantled Somali social institutions and left enduring legacies of fragility.

Italy’s Ethiopian occupation (1935-1941) was guided by a systematic “policy of terror and extermination”. Italian forces employed chemical weapons, including mustard gas, and destroyed villages, bombed Red Cross hospitals and executed prisoners.

The 1937 Addis Ababa massacre alone claimed 19,000 to 30,000 lives in three days, while the Debre Libanos monastery mass killings revealed Italy’s intent to destroy Ethiopia’s spiritual and cultural identity. This was driven by revenge for their loss at the 1896 Battle of Adwa, and a fascist ideology of racial supremacy.

Following the fall of fascism, Italy largely evaded accountability for its crimes in the Horn. Although the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties contained reparations provisions, these remain unimplemented. 

Ethiopia’s offer to establish a hybrid tribunal with Ethiopian and European judges to prosecute alleged war criminals, including Rodolfo Graziani (key in the expansion of Italy’s colonisation and occupation in the Horn and Libya), was rejected. The UN War Crimes Commission declined to classify Italy’s atrocities in Ethiopia as part of World War 2. Extradition requests were dismissed as politically inconvenient.

Decades later, Italy added insult to injury when a publicly funded mausoleum was erected in honour of Graziani — the “butcher of Addis Ababa” — in Affile, symbolising a continued refusal to confront the past.

Italy’s gestures — such as development cooperation and the return of cultural artefacts like the Axum Obelisk — weren’t accompanied by an official apology or acknowledgement of wrongdoing. While presidents Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (1997) and Sergio Mattarella (2016) expressed sorrow during visits to Addis Ababa, no formal parliamentary resolution or reparative policy followed. 

Meanwhile, in 2008, then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi issued a formal apology to Libya and pledged $5-billion in reparations. This revealed a double standard that undermines Italy’s credibility in promoting a new partnership with the Horn.

Historical accountability conspicuously avoided

Meloni’s recent engagement conspicuously avoided historical accountability. When asked by La Repubblica during her 2023 visit to Ethiopia about the possibility of an apology, she replied: “We did not talk about it; your newspaper was not there.”

Italy’s renewed ties with Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia remain largely transactional — focused on investment and migration management — while ignoring the moral debt owed to the region and its people. This silence contradicts the Mattei Plan’s stated values, which emphasise partnership of equals and reject extractive approaches. Infrastructure investment and aid, while important, cannot substitute for moral reckoning.

For the Horn countries, pursuing an official apology is not merely symbolic; it aligns with ongoing transitional justice efforts and with the African Union’s agenda on reparations for colonial violence. Ethiopia’s Transitional Justice Policy offers an entry point for addressing foreign-perpetrated crimes through truth-seeking and historical acknowledgement. 

Eritrea and Somalia have moral and political grounds to demand recognition for the injustices that shaped their modern realities. During the 2024 Italy-Africa Summit, Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki reportedly reminded Meloni that genuine partnership required transparency, including the opening of colonial archives and acknowledgement of the 150,000 Eritreans conscripted into Italy’s army.

The region’s history, marked by infrastructure built for extraction and settlement, not local benefit, offers a cautionary lesson. Without accountability, the Horn cannot be sure that this renewed engagement won’t risk repeating history’s extractive and unequal dynamics.

For Italy, the Mattei Plan could present an opportunity to transform a relationship rooted in domination and denial into one grounded in equality and accountability. Until Italy acknowledges its colonial crimes and takes concrete steps towards reparative justice, its engagement with the region will remain haunted by unhealed wounds.

Reparations should include truth-telling initiatives, archival access, memorialisation, survivor support and education reform in Italy to ensure colonial history is accurately taught. An apology is not an act of weakness but a foundation for genuine partnership — based on trust, respect and shared humanity. 

Only then can Italy’s Mattei Plan truly embody the fairness and reciprocity it professes. DM

Tadesse Simie Metekia is a Senior Researcher, and​ Saron Hirpa Abu is a Research Intern, Special Projects, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Addis Ababa.

First published by ISS Today.