The Relationship in Short

Italy's presence in Angola is far larger than its diplomacy suggests, and almost all of it runs through one company. Eni, operating through Azule Energy — a joint venture held equally with bp and incorporated in Luanda — is among the largest energy operators in the country. Italian exports to Angola were worth around €72 million in 2023. The Agogo Integrated West Hub alone represented an investment decision of $8.2 billion, the largest anywhere in the world that year. Judging this relationship by trade figures misses it entirely.

The energy record is substantial and recent. Production began at Agogo in July 2025 and at Ndungu in February 2026, together expected to reach a peak of around 175,000 barrels a day, close to 15 per cent of national output. More significant for Angola's own diversification is the New Gas Consortium, the country's first development of gas not produced alongside oil. Its treatment plant at Soyo was inaugurated by President Lourenço in November 2025, six months ahead of schedule, and now feeds the Angola LNG plant with a capacity of some 400 million cubic feet a day.

Government policy came later and is organised around the Piano Mattei *, launched by Giorgia Meloni in January 2024 and extended to Angola in 2025 as one of five new partner countries. Here the sums are smaller and mostly indirect: up to $320 million pledged towards the Lobito Corridor as an initial ceiling, €250 million from CDP and SACE to the Africa Finance Corporation, and €20 million co-financing an African Development Bank agriculture project in eastern Angola.

The plan has its critics at home. Italian business associations complain of fragmented governance and slow mechanisms; sharper voices ask whether cooperation funds are subsidising national champions while smaller firms cannot reach them. Others note the irony that Enrico Mattei was an outsider who broke the multinational consensus, while the plan bearing his name sits comfortably within Global Gateway and G7 strategy. What follows sets out the framework, Eni's operations, the gas project, the corridor commitments and the criticism.

* Background Information:

The Piano Mattei — the Mattei Plan — is Italy's framework for its relations with Africa, launched by Giorgia Meloni at an Italy-Africa summit in Rome in January 2024. Angola joined in 2025.

The name is the argument. Enrico Mattei founded Eni after the war and made his reputation by breaking the terms the Anglo-American oil majors imposed on producing countries, offering North African and Middle Eastern governments a larger share of the revenue than the cartel thought acceptable. Invoking him signals that Italy intends a partnership of equals rather than an extractive or donor relationship — Meloni has described the approach as "non-predatory."

How it works. Initial funding was announced at €5.5 billion, some of it loans rather than grants, across six areas: education and training, health, water, agriculture, energy, and physical and digital infrastructure, with further work in culture, sport, artificial intelligence and space. Meloni chairs it herself through a control room including relevant ministers and the state-linked companies Eni and Enel, supported by a mission structure under a diplomatic adviser. A progress report goes to the Italian Parliament every June.

It began with nine countries — Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, DR Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique. Angola, Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal and Tanzania were added in 2025, bringing the total to fourteen. Alongside country programmes it funds transnational projects, the Lobito Corridor chief among them.

Two things drive it, and neither is primarily developmental. The first is energy: after Russian gas supplies were cut, Italy scrambled for replacements, largely through Eni's African positions, and the plan repackaged that scramble into a long-term strategy to make Rome Europe's southern energy corridor. The second is migration — investment in the south in exchange for cooperation on departures across the central Mediterranean, an issue that has dominated Italian politics for a decade.

The criticism follows from that. Italian critics argue the plan gives energy majors a fast lane while smaller firms cannot access the funds, which raises the question of whether cooperation money is helping Africa or subsidising the expansion of Italian national champions. Business associations complain of fragmented governance and slow delivery. And there's the pointed irony that Mattei was an outsider challenging the Western consensus, while the plan named for him integrates neatly into Global Gateway and G7 strategy.

For Angola specifically, the practical content so far is modest — the corridor commitment, the CDP and SACE financing to the Africa Finance Corporation, and the agriculture co-financing — which is why the Italy file treats Eni and the Piano Mattei as two separate stories rather than one.