Business or Multilateralism? Italy and Spain’s Competing Models of Engagement with Africa

Italy’s Mattei Plan is meant to improve the country’s position in Africa. Through initiatives such as the ELMED project and migration externalisation agreements with Libya and Tunisia, Italy has advanced a politics-driven and business-oriented model of engagement, with limited involvement of multilateral institutions or civil society actors. In contrast, Spain’s Africa Strategy 2025-2028, though more recent and less publicised, emphasises multilateralism, development cooperation and partnerships with civil society. Despite the growing relevance of the Atlantic route, Spain has yet to articulate an overarching geopolitical vision equivalent to the Italian one towards the ‘enlarged Mediterranean’. Its bilateral arrangements with Morocco and Algeria remain reactive and fragmented, limiting the strategic depth of its engagement along the Atlantic frontier. The two strategies offer materials for a comparative analysis. To do so, we map the actors and compares how each country uses its partnership with Africa to reposition itself within broader foreign policy agenda. We argue that Italy and Spain pursue two differentiated models of engagement: the former driven by state-business alliances and bilateralism, the latter by multilateralism and inclusive governance. These diverging approaches reflect not only competing geopolitical Mediterranean imaginaries but also distinct visions of how to structure Europe’s evolving partnership with Africa.