Italy

Where it is on record

Piano Mattei projects sit where the map puts them: a named site or town where the portal's description gives one, otherwise the country's interior point, and one fixed point in the Central African Republic for programmes across several countries. Aid is drawn at each country's interior point, sized by seven years of commitments. Eni's pipelines are drawn as routes, Sparkle's cables as dotted lines, power units in the map's status colours. Debt owed to Italy is off until switched on.

The pipelines, power units and cables are the map's own records with an Italian name among the owners, Eni's share of a Nigerian or Libyan line included; the profile does not add records, it filters. Routes that leave the continent, the Trans-Mediterranean and Greenstream lines into Italy and the cables to the Gulf and India, are cut at the frame.

Piano Mattei: the Government's own list

The Presidency of the Council publishes one page per project, with the plan's directives, the objective, the countries, the implementing body, the partners, the funding source and a five-step progress bar. The map reads all of it and states, on every card, how precisely the project could be placed. 30 of the 76 projects are education and training; by stated money the largest sector is energy. Stages: 51 ongoing, 17 approved, 4 completed, 3 formulated, 1 identified.

The figures are the portal's own and are read as such: a stated amount may be the whole project's value, other funders' shares included, or Italy's contribution, and the portal does not say which. ELMED, the Tunisia–Sicily interconnector, carries EUR 1.4 bn that is mostly European and Tunisian money; a Climate Fund loan is Italy's alone. The amounts are therefore shown on a line of their own and never added to the lenders' commitments, here or on the map.

The development agency's own record: AICS OpenAid

The Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) publishes every initiative it manages to the International Aid Transparency Initiative, in the files behind its OpenAid portal: 1,889 activities with an African recipient, EUR 3.13 bn committed and EUR 2.27 bn paid out, net of revisions. 380 are in implementation, 293 in finalisation, 1,194 closed and 22 cancelled. They reach 44 countries, Ethiopia (EUR 384 m), Mozambique (EUR 313 m), Tunisia (EUR 205 m) first, plus 105 regional programmes worth EUR 269 m.

Every record is a grant. The agency runs 511 of them itself, through its field offices; 623 go through Italian and local NGOs; UN agencies and other multilaterals take 38% of the money. Commitments reached EUR 757 m in 2025, against an average of EUR 244 m a year over 2020–2024. The largest new lines are the agri-food programmes of CIHEAM, the Mediterranean agronomic institute in Bari: 31 activities, EUR 327 m. Three of them, in Ghana, Senegal and the Republic of the Congo, are the Piano Mattei's AREA Africa programme, and their commitments add up to the figure the plan's portal states for it: the same money, listed once by the plan and once by the agency that pays it out.

These are the projects the OECD's Creditor Reporting System carries under the agency's name (1,167 CRS records over 2018–2024, in the next section), seen from the other end: one record per funding line for its whole life, in euros, with the implementing partner, the status and a page on the portal, where the CRS has one line per year in dollars. The euros are therefore never added to the CRS dollars, here or anywhere else on the site. The files do not place the projects: 837 activities carry a location, and in each country it is the same unnamed point, the agency's field office in the capital. The profile map leaves them off, as it does the CRS records.

Agency records that build something

The rule of the CRS records below, with the words read on the title only: purpose codes for transport, communications, energy and water, the facility codes of health and education, or a title that mentions building, renovating, rehabilitating, drilling or wells. The agency's descriptions run to a page and mention irrigation or a clinic in passing, so read whole they would let an agribusiness grant or a decentralisation programme through. 223 activities pass, EUR 286 m: infrastructure is a small part of what the agency pays for, and by money its largest sectors are agriculture, humanitarian aid and health.

Aid activities: OECD Creditor Reporting System

Italy reports its aid to the OECD at activity level, with 7,768 distinct titles for 10,068 records over the seven years, descriptions that name partners and often towns, a purpose code, a channel and a finance type. What makes the record unusual is who reports it: 36% of the activities come under "Earmarked fiscal flows to NGOs & religious organisations", the tax-designation scheme through which taxpayers assign a share of their income tax, and a further large share from the NGO scheme and from public universities. The Agency for Development Cooperation, the regions and the foreign ministry report fewer, larger records. The biggest single lines are not projects at all: the 2021 cancellation of Somalia's debt under the HIPC initiative, the policy-based loans to Kenya and Rwanda, and the Italian Climate Fund's bond and equity subscriptions.

The purpose codes are the reliable part. The descriptions often name a town or a district (3,706 of the records mention one), but the CRS carries no coordinates and no gazetteer could be trusted at this scale, so the aid is drawn at country points and kept off the project map, as for the other lenders. The agency's own IATI files, in the section above, do not place it either.

Records that build something

Purpose codes for transport, energy, water and the facility codes of health and education, plus titles that mention building, renovating or drilling: 3,448 records, USD 1,317 m, over the seven years.

Pipelines, power units and cables with an Italian owner

The map's energy and connectivity layers carry an owner field; this table is those records filtered for an Italian name. Eni's position is the largest of any Italian company on the continent: the Trans-Mediterranean line from Algeria through Tunisia, Greenstream from Libya, the Wafa–Mellitah and Sharara lines in Libya, the Zohr and Damietta lines in Egypt, the Brass and Tebidaba oil network in the Niger Delta, and a solar plant with Sonatrach at Bir Rebaa. Enel Green Power owns 1,032 MW of operating wind and solar, most of it in South Africa. Sparkle, Telecom Italia's international arm, sits in the ownership of 8 cables that land in Africa.

Eni's and other companies' oil and gas fields are not here: Global Energy Monitor's extraction tracker is released through a request form, not the open bucket the map's fetcher reads. The pipelines are the part of the upstream footprint that is open data.

Country-year series: investment stock, net aid, debt

Three official series describe Italian money in Africa one country and one year at a time. The OECD's FDI positions give Italy's outward direct-investment stock by partner country, which is where the oil and gas is: Algeria, Egypt and Nigeria lead. The DAC2a table gives net ODA by recipient. The World Bank's debt statistics give what each government owes Italian creditors, the state and its banks together; the state's part is what remains of decades of bilateral lending after the debt relief of the 2000s.

Direct-investment stock by partner country

Net ODA by recipient

Over 2010–2024 Italy's net ODA to Africa came to USD 6.59 bn; Somalia received the most. Debt cancellation counts as ODA in the year it is granted, and loan repayments count against it, which is what moves the yearly figure.

Debt owed to Italy

World Bank International Debt Statistics, counterpart 006: all public and publicly guaranteed debt to creditors there, the state and its banks together (series DPPG, as on the debt page), with the bilateral official part beside it. Sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed borrowing only; SACE-insured export credits to private borrowers and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti's lending to non-sovereign borrowers are outside the series.

How to read this page

One record is

In the Piano Mattei table, one project page on the Government's portal. In the agency tables, one AICS activity as the agency publishes it to IATI, a funding line for its whole life (a second tranche of the same initiative is a record of its own). In the aid tables, one CRS activity as Italy reports it. In the energy table, one GEM power unit, one pipeline (its segments counted) or one cable, as the map carries them. In the series, one country and one year.

Status

Piano Mattei stages map as on the map: identified and formulated are announced, approved is approved, ongoing is under construction, completed is operating. GEM and TeleGeography records use the map's own mapping. AICS activities keep the IATI word (implementation, finalisation, closed, cancelled), coloured as the map colours IATI records. CRS activities have no status.

Money

Piano Mattei amounts are the portal's figures in euros, shown as stated. AICS commitments and disbursements are in euros, the sum of the files' transactions net of revisions (about one transaction in eight is negative). CRS commitments and disbursements are in current US dollars as reported. Net ODA is current prices. FDI stock is the OECD's net position, all resident units, immediate counterpart. Debt is the World Bank's public and publicly guaranteed stock owed to the lender's creditors, the state and its banks together, as the debt page counts it, with the bilateral official part, the state's own claims, beside it. None of these is added to the map's lenders, and none is added to the others.

Location

Piano Mattei projects use the map's placement: a site or town named in the description, a named administrative area, the country's interior point, or the plan's fixed continental point. AICS activities are not drawn: the only location in the files is the agency's field office, one unnamed point per country. Aid and the three series are drawn at the country's interior point. Pipelines and cables are the map's routes, thinned; power units carry GEM's coordinates.

Not here, and why

• Project sites for the agency's work. AICS's IATI files carry no site locations, only the field office; OpenAid's documents and photos, linked from each activity page, can name a town.
• SACE, the export-credit agency, publishes no register of insured or guaranteed transactions; Cassa Depositi e Prestiti publishes no project list for its lending in Africa. Where either shows up, it is through the CRS loan records or the Piano Mattei pages.
• Eni's and others' oil and gas fields are in GEM's Oil and Gas Extraction Tracker, released through a request form only.
• The OECD's bulk CRS files sit behind a browser challenge; the page uses the SDMX microdata query, one year at a time.

Sources and licences

• Italian Government, Piano Mattei per l'Africa project portal (Presidency of the Council of Ministers), one page per project in Italian and English; CC BY 3.0 IT. Read as the map's layer.
• Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), OpenAid: the agency's IATI 2.03 activity files, 47 of them (one per African recipient and the three African regional codes), read through the IATI Registry, files of 1 Oct 2026; CC BY, per the Registry. Each record links to its page on openaid.aics.gov.it.
• OECD, Creditor Reporting System, Italy as provider (DAC code 6), activity-level microdata through the SDMX API, dataflow DSD_CRS@DF_CRS; OECD terms of use, free reuse with attribution.
• OECD, DAC2a, net ODA disbursements by recipient (measure 206), current prices, dataflow DSD_DAC2@DF_DAC2A.
• OECD, FDI positions by partner country (Benchmark Definition, 4th edition), Italy outward, dataflow DSD_FDI@DF_FDI_POS_CTRY.
• World Bank, International Debt Statistics, source 6, counterpart area 006; CC BY 4.0, release of 3 Dec 2025.
• Global Energy Monitor, Global Integrated Power Tracker and Global Gas and Oil Infrastructure Trackers, as the map draws them; CC BY 4.0. TeleGeography, Submarine Cable Map; CC BY-SA 4.0.

Download

Everything on this page, with the aid aggregates by country, year, purpose and agency, every AICS activity with an African recipient (one line each, without descriptions), the three series per country, the Piano Mattei list and the filtered energy records with their routes: italy.json. The OECD and World Bank series and the AICS files are re-fetched with every data refresh; the Piano Mattei, GEM and TeleGeography records follow the map's own fetches.