Below is a Google Translate version of an article that appeared in the Italian newspaper, Republica 

Premier Conte will go to Ethiopia and Eritrea in October

The Prime Minister will be in Addis Ababa in the first half of October, most probably the 11th, for a bilateral agreement with the new premier Abiy Ahmed, which will be followed by a visit to Eritrea where he will meet President Isaias Afewerki.

ROME – After Canada and the United States, Giuseppe Conte will fly to Africa. In fact, the Prime Minister will be in Addis Ababa in the first half of October, most likely on the 11th, for a bilateral agreement with the new premier Abiy Ahmed, followed by a visit to Eritrea where he will meet President Isaias Afewerki.

The news of the premier’s institutional visit takes place five days after the historic, new course of peace between the two African countries, started on July 8th with the signed declaration of the two leaders for the stop to the state of war that lasted 20 years and sealed on 17 September in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in the presence of the Saudi King Salman, who mediated the peace process together with the Arab Emirates, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and the President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamated. A choice that places Italy at the center of an exceptional event that will bring with it positive consequences throughout the continent and overseas.

Conte’s mission wants to be a support to this rapprochement in a zone of the nerve-cropping Africa for Italy, considering our common historical past that bind us in a bond also affective. The president of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, went to Addis Ababa in 2016.

We must not forget that Ethiopia is for us the second beneficiary of international cooperation on the continent. The peace between the two countries and the presence that Italy wants to confirm with this Count’s visit could favor positive developments on the issue of migration flows, of which Eritrea is one of the major countries of origin.