by Mario Lettieri and Paolo Raimondi * –
In a recent interview, cited in an article in the magazine “Analisi Difesa”, the former prime minister and former president of the European Commission Romano Prodi tackles the economic, infrastructural and social development of the African continent in a concrete, farsighted and rightly polemical way. . He does it as a statesman and not as a partisan.
One of the areas most affected by the lack of development is Lake Chad, in the Sahel, the sub-Saharan region. The lake is disappearing with the advance of the desert. Since the 1960s it has shrunk by 90% while the surrounding population has grown from 5 to 60 million. The existence of entire communities of farmers, breeders and fishermen is threatened. According to the UN, 34 million people survive thanks to humanitarian assistance. The crisis has caused local conflicts and favored the penetration of terrorism. People are fleeing towards all directions of emigration.
The crisis is not inevitable. For more than forty years there has been the “Transaqua” project which involves a 2,400 km canal with water transfer by gravity from the Congo River basin towards Lake Chad. We have written about it several times in this newspaper.
“Transaqua could be a wonderful proposal, says Prodi, and Italy, which is currently working on a Mattei Plan for Africa, could lead the way, because it cannot do it alone. A strong healthy lobbying action is needed, appealing to Europe, the United Nations, the African Union, the United States and even China if necessary. We need everyone’s collaboration and a paradigm shift. It is time to put an end to the separate approaches in Africa, for which, and it is now clear to all, France is paying a very high price.”
Prodi has spoken about Transaqua several times in recent years, in particular in his capacity as UN special envoy for the Sahel and president of the “Foundation for collaboration between peoples”.
The project was presented in 1980 by the Bonifica company, of the IRI Group, just when Prodi was president. It would allow the creation of a vast area of agricultural development and also the production of hydroelectric power. A growth driver that would directly involve the countries bordering the basin: Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger and, indirectly, others. Forty years ago it would have cost 4 billion dollars, today it would require around 50. It seems like a huge sum, but it isn’t if we compare it to the tens of billions spent in Africa on stop-gap interventions, or to the cost of a year of the war in Ukraine . The G20 should make it its own, thus giving substance to the many discussions on climate change and the many promises for development and the environment in Africa.
Despite the fact that there is a Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) which has been working for decades to resolve the problems inherent to the draining of the lake and despite the fact that in 2018 it identified Transaqua as the only possible solution, the project has always been opposed, boycotted, internationally. For example, Defense Analysis cites a 2020 report funded by the British Commonwealth and French government institutions, “Soft Power, Discourse Coalitions and the Proposed Inter-Basin Water Transfer Between Lake Chad and the Congo River,” which argues that the aim of Transaqua, by placing the waterway at the center of a larger pan-African transport system, would be “in line with Italy’s previous expansionist dreams in the Sahel”. A neocolonial Italy in sub-Saharan Africa? Absurdity. Let the English and French say it…
“The French objections, says Prodi, are rather curious, as if infrastructure interventions shouldn’t be carried out in Africa. This is about helping nature recover a situation of internal balance for the benefit of African peoples. And to understand the importance of Transaqua just consider that the Lake Chad basin covers one eighth of the African continent”.
Unfortunately, the international community still seems to want to focus more on short or medium-term humanitarian and environmental interventions than on radical, long-term solutions. Perhaps, before long, the voice of the young African generations will be heard louder and the rest of the world, especially the West, will no longer be able to ignore it. In this regard, it would be nice if young Europeans also made their voices heard.
* Mario Lettieri, former deputy and undersecretary of the Economy; Paolo Raimondi, economist and university professor.
