The opening day of the Mozambique-Italy Business Mission, focused on infrastructure and construction, unfolded under the Mattei Plan, Rome’s flagship framework for investment-led partnership with the continent. It was organised by the Italian embassy in Maputo, the Italian Trade Agency and the Italian-Mozambican Chamber of Commerce, and spanned logistics, energy and urban development.
Italy is no newcomer in gas
The premise that Italy is arriving late does not survive contact with the data. ENI has been present in Mozambique since 2006 and operates Area 4 of the Rovuma Basin as delegated operator. Its Coral Sul vessel, the first floating LNG facility deployed in African waters, has exported since 2022 and passed its hundredth cargo in 2025. In October, ENI and its partners sanctioned a $7.2 billion second unit, Coral North, due onstream in 2028, which will lift Mozambique to Africa’s third-largest LNG producer.
Where Italian and Asian capital already meet
Crucially, ENI does not operate alone. Area 4 is held through a venture that includes China’s CNPC, while South Korea’s KOGAS sits among the direct shareholders, and the floating units themselves were built by Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries with Japan’s JGC. A separate, stalled onshore project led by TotalEnergies carries the stakes of Japan’s Mitsui, India’s Bharat Petroleum, Oil India and ONGC Videsh, and Thailand’s PTTEP. For readers across Asia, Mozambican gas is not contested ground between Italy and the region — it is already a shared Italian-Asian enterprise.
What the mission adds
Three panels structured the day, pairing Italian and Mozambican operators on logistics corridors with the World Bank, on energy infrastructure with the African Development Bank, and on public works and urban regeneration. The Mattei Plan Mozambique push therefore reads less as Italy entering a market than as Rome layering civilian infrastructure onto an energy partnership it already anchors.
Ambassador Annis and Minister Albino present the Green Cities program declaration, signed as part of the Mattei PlanA signing to seal the day
Italy’s Ambassador to Mozambique, Gabriele Annis, closed proceedings by co-signing a Green Cities Declaration of Intent with Mozambique’s Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries, Roberto Mito Albino, under the Mattei Plan. The accord opens the way for sustainable urban-regeneration work in the provincial capitals of Pemba and Chimoio, and Albino framed the partnership in warm terms, describing it as “a genuine fabric of friendship and cooperation that binds two brotherly peoples.” The mission concludes on 9 June with bilateral meetings and a Business Forum hosted by the European Union under its Global Gateway programme.
