Italy is becoming increasingly active in African agriculture: on Friday 12 February, the Fieragricola (Agricultural Fair) in Verona, Italy, dedicated a whole day to addressing the opportunities that the African agricultural has to offer.
The President of the Italian Council, Matteo Renzi, has recently completed his third tour of the continent and West Africa was the highlight. As a first for a president of the Italian Council, he visited Dakar and also Ghana and Nigeria. Immigration certainly plays a central role in Italian preoccupations, but to deal with the question, Italy intends to make a bigger contribution to developing the continent, in particular the agricultural sector.
Last year, Africa also took pride of place at the Universal Exposition in Milan. Now it is Verona's turn to place emphasis on the continent, showcasing Italian expertise in agricultural mechanics, zoo-technology and production of renewable energy.
"The African continent has a reserve of uncultivated and arable land to the order of 226 million hectares. An area which could even be doubled through investments, for instance in irrigation and new technologies," says the President of Fieragricola, Maurizio Danese. "The rural fabric there is made up of nearly 60 million small farms, 77% of them meeting the subsistence needs of their owners."
