A two-day forum titled «Il metodo Mattei» opened in Rome to discuss a model of cooperation with Africa built on agriculture, energy and industrial transformation. The event was organized by the Fondazione Social Economic Development Enrico Mattei, known as Sed, and it set out to frame relations with the African continent as an exchange of mutual interest rather than a series of aid transfers.
Aroldo Curzi Mattei, president of the foundation and great-nephew of Enrico Mattei, the founder of Eni, said the organization wants to make agriculture a driver of local growth. He described Africa as a young continent that will play a decisive role in shaping future food security. In his remarks, decisions taken in Kenya and in Lagos were said to have consequences for global food stability, a point meant to show that the issue reaches well beyond the region itself. The approach he outlined rests on the idea that partnerships should produce returns for both sides, which is the core of the principle the forum sought to promote.
Jean-Leonard Touadi, special coordinator for parliamentary networks at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, argued that food is now best understood as a geopolitical question and not only a moral one. The framing reflects a shift in how governments and international bodies approach hunger, production and supply chains, with food security increasingly tied to questions of power and stability between states. Touadi's intervention placed the discussion within a wider international debate in which parliaments and policymakers are asked to treat agricultural planning as a matter of strategic importance rather than a purely charitable concern.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo was represented by Gregoire Mutshail Mutomb, the minister holding the rural development portfolio. He named three prerequisites for rural progress: water, infrastructure and electricity. Without them, he indicated, agricultural potential remains difficult to realize, and rural communities are left without the means to store, transport and process what they grow. He said the country is open to investment partners and pointed to its assets, including water resources, biodiversity, minerals and its capacity to absorb carbon. In presenting these assets, the minister emphasized that the country sees its natural endowment as a basis for partnership rather than as a resource to be extracted without local benefit.
A central goal raised at the forum was to keep rural populations on their land, slowing migration from the countryside toward cities and abroad. By linking farming to energy access and industrial processing, the proponents of the approach argue that local economies can generate jobs and value at home. Speakers presented this as a way to address the pressures that push young people away from agricultural areas, although the reporting does not detail specific programs designed to achieve that result.
The excerpt of the reporting does not include specific funding amounts, signed agreements or concrete commitments, and it does not describe the conclusions reached by the participants at the close of the forum. Nor does it record direct reactions from institutions outside the event itself, so the practical impact of the discussions in Rome remains to be seen. What the two days did establish, according to the speakers, is a shared view that food, energy and rural development must be considered together if cooperation with Africa is to move beyond the logic of assistance.