The Piano Mattei represents Italy’s most significant strategic initiative to redefine its relationship with Africa and the Mediterranean basin. It is not just an economic cooperation program, but an attempt to build a new geopolitical architecture founded on reciprocity, co-responsibility, and shared development. Within this framework, higher education—university, technical, and managerial—is a decisive lever, both to support the growth of partner countries and to strengthen the competitiveness and international projection of the Italian system.
In a global scenario characterized by growing competition, education can no longer be considered an accessory element. It is the true strategic infrastructure of nations: it enables innovation, productivity, institutional stability, and social cohesion. The Piano Mattei therefore takes on a cultural value as well as a political one: it proposes to overcome the welfare logic by establishing an equal relationship, capable of leveraging African human capital through targeted investments in technical-scientific skills and managerial expertise. This approach connects directly to the concept of soft power. Academic and scientific diplomacy is a powerful and durable tool, as it creates networks of trust between universities, institutions, and businesses, which are often more resilient than traditional diplomacy. In this context, Italy can play a natural role as a “hinge” between continents, thanks to its geographical position, Mediterranean history, and cultural tradition.
One central point is the awareness that Africa, while needing physical infrastructure, has an even greater need to train its human capital. By 2030, approximately 40% of the world’s youth will live on the African continent, and by 2050 there will be 1.5 billion people of working age. However, participation in tertiary education in sub-Saharan Africa remains below 10%, while in Europe it is around 40%. This gap is economic and geopolitical as well as educational. Bridging it means contributing to more sustainable development by reducing imbalances that fuel instability and forced migration. Furthermore, education has a direct impact on demographics: an increase in schooling and economic development tends to reduce the birth rate and favors more balanced growth trajectories. From this perspective, investing in education in Africa also serves as a strategic defense against future turbulence and helps construct regional stability.
At the same time, Italy is experiencing an opposite process: a declining birth rate and a reduction in the domestic demand for education will have significant consequences on universities in the coming years, making the opening of the Italian educational system to international markets urgent. The Piano Mattei, with substantial resources and clear political guidelines, can become the framework within which to rethink this internationalization, strengthening courses in English (and French), dual-degree programs, and mobility pathways. The possibility of also offering courses in Italian should not be overlooked, considering the good spread of the language on the continent. In this scenario, online universities assume a crucial role, having been established with the objective of expanding access to knowledge by breaking down logistical and economic barriers. The construction of scalable transnational models requires rigorous standards of quality, transparency, and credibility, so that online education is not perceived as a lower-quality solution.
Alongside the academic world, the involvement of businesses and industrial associations is decisive. The Piano Mattei can spark and reinforce initiatives that are currently fragmented, creating coordination between educational pathways, productive investments, and employment needs. The theme is twofold: on the one hand, providing training for skills that serve local development in partner countries; on the other hand, responding to the shortage of qualified labor in Italy. The key is to build a win-win model, avoiding the perception of neocolonialism and guaranteeing bilaterality.
In such a framework, ITS (Istituti Tecnici Superiori) represent a concrete solution to the mismatch between education and the labor market. Cooperation with African and Mediterranean countries on technical-vocational pathways, integrated with businesses and schools, can contribute both to strengthening local educational systems and to creating skill chains compatible with the Italian productive fabric, especially in sectors like sustainable agriculture, energy, information technology, healthcare, infrastructure, AI, and cybersecurity. In particular, agriculture is a pillar of the African economy: it employs about 40% of the workforce and contributes up to 15% of GDP, often with low productivity and scarce innovation. Here, improved technical education and higher academic degrees can become a lever for profound transformation, creating sustainable and inclusive agro-industrial business models capable of generating employment and food security.
Finally, importance must be given to the aspect of monitoring. The transfer of skills must focus on creating local development projects, entrepreneurial opportunities, and employment integration pathways. Even eventual migration to Italy must be managed with modern tools, such as circular migration, to allow for exchanges of skills without draining partner countries of their human capital.
In conclusion, the Piano Mattei can become a stable platform for advanced cooperation if it can place education at the center of a common strategic infrastructure. Universities, ITS, businesses, and institutions must operate as a single knowledge ecosystem. Only in this way will Italy be able to contribute to African and Mediterranean growth, while simultaneously strengthening its own competitiveness, its own security, and its own geopolitical role in a changing world.