Cattaneo: 'Development is triggered from below and by involving all actors'
Interview with the Lombardy undersecretary with responsibility for internationalisation
"The Mattei Plan is a great opportunity for Italian companies, starting with the great national champions of infrastructure and energy. But as the Lombardy Region, we have set ourselves the goal of ensuring that small and medium-sized enterprises and territories can also benefit from this opportunity to the fullest". For Raffaele Cattaneo, Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Region with responsibility for International and European Relations, "development is a process that is triggered first and foremost from the bottom up, and Lombardy today has a leading role in development cooperation, which is the other side of internationalisation, so to speak, based on the idea that, to grow, you have to work and build projects together".
So in order to contribute to the growth of African countries, it is necessary to involve local actors?
Exactly. But first of all, it is necessary to distinguish between countries: Africa has 54 sovereign states, very different from each other and with a different degree of development, which therefore demand different things from their European partners. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between nations that our government has identified as cooperation countries, and nations that instead, having reached a certain level of development and prosperity, feel they no longer need international cooperation and seek other kinds of collaboration, such as those we have in place with other countries around the world.
Let's focus now on the first group of nations: what is Lombardy doing in Africa, in terms of international cooperation?
Our aim is to set in motion the same development model that enabled our territory to grow in the post World War II period and become one of the most dynamic economies in Europe. And this model sees companies, social realities, universities, vocational training centres and local institutions working together. Our projects therefore involve these actors in the various countries, as well as Lombardy's actors capable of bringing skills and know-how to contribute to development processes.
