The Mattei plan
In early 2024 the Italian government launched a strategic initiative to deepen and reshape Italy’s partnership with African countries. It was named after Enrico Mattei, the founder of Italian oil company Eni.
For the Italian government the Mattei Plan seeks to address multiple challenges: migration, climate change and economic development. In November 2025, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said:
“The Mattei Plan is not just an Italian initiative, but is now a strategy with a European and international scope, which looks far ahead and is gaining increasing support. Today the Mattei Plan is no longer an idea, but an operational reality that is producing concrete results.”
“This project marks the dawn of a new industry for Kenya, an industry where Kenya could become a world leader,” said Makhtar Diop, IFC Managing Director.
One of the key pillars of the Mattei Plan is energy and within that biofuels production. In 2024, IFC and the Italian Climate Fund announced a $210 million investment in Eni S.p.A.’s Kenya subsidiary to expand the production and processing of advanced biofuels, supporting the decarbonisation of the global transport industry and the livelihoods of up to 200,000 small-scale Kenyan oilseed farmers.
No competition with food crops
The stated aim of the project is to grow non-edible oilseed crops like castor, croton, and cotton seeds on lands where growing crops is difficult, as not to compete with food supplies. Eni expects a production increase of oilseeds from 44,000 tons to 500,000 tons per year (the exact timeframe for this is unclear in the press release). Guido Brusco, Eni’s Chief Operating Officer for Natural Resources said they aimed to produce 200,000 tonnes by 2026.
According to Eni’s press release in 2022:
“The agri-hub will process castor, croton and cotton seeds to extract vegetable oil. These are sustainable, agri-feedstock raw materials that do not compete with the food supply chain because they come from crops that are resistant to aridity and suitable for growing on degraded soils, namely castor crops, seeds harvested from spontaneous plants (croton), and co-products of the cotton supply chain in a circular economy perspective.”
Interestingly, Eni’s project in Kenya is the first certified as low-ILUC, i.e. a project with low indirect land-use change (ILUC) effects. The certification confirms compliance with EU standards aimed at ensuring that biofuel production does not indirectly shift agricultural land intended for food and feed production towards biofuel production.
