Italian Construction Industry Expands in Africa

The African business of the Italian construction industry is growing from year to year. As stated by Vice President for Internationalization of the National Association of Building Contractors (ANCE), Federico Ghella, during a government meeting on the implementation of the Mattei Plan (a project of the Italian government to strengthen the partnership between Italy and African countries, dedicated to Enrico Mattei, former president of the ENI Group, who died in 1962), “current orders of companies associated with ANCE at the moment amount to approximately 12 billion euros.” Five construction sites are located in North Africa and another seven in sub-Saharan Africa, representing 12% of total orders.

In particular, ANCE commended the Italian executive’s decision to “finance technical and economic feasibility studies of major infrastructure works proposed by the Italian system to partner countries, particularly African ones.” However, Ghella noted that this is actually “a proposal that the construction system has been pushing for years.”

For this reason, the Association of Building Constructors is working with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which deals with foreign policy, development cooperation, economic, cultural, and scientific diplomacy) and with ICE (a government agency that supports Italian companies in developing abroad) to improve various types of procedures, after which some new projects will soon be presented. “The first ideas,” Ghella said, “will concern Tunisia, Ivory Coast, and Kenya.” As for better access to tenders from multilateral development banks – and in the case of business in Africa, this is the African Development Bank (ADB) Group – ANCE commends the “new aid structure for construction companies supported by the Foreign Ministry and ICE in multilateral development bank tenders.” The Italian delegation is expected to attend the ADB Annual Meeting to be held in Nairobi, Kenya on May 27-31, 2024.