FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Lake Chad Basin Commission and Italy Sign Memorandum on Transaqua Project for Africa

Oct. 16, 2018 (EIRNS)—A memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the initial funding of the feasibility study for the Transaqua project in Africa was signed today in Rome by the Italian government and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, based in N’djamena, Chad.

Francesco La Camera, director general of the Italian Environment Ministry, and Mamman Nuhu, Executive Secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, today signed a document that certifies an Italian government grant of € 1.5 million to finance the feasibility study for the project to refill Lake Chad and build a water, transport, electricity and agro-industrial infrastructure in central Africa, developed by the Italian firm Bonifica more than 35 years ago.

The formal signing follows the decision announced last Feb. 28 at the Feb. 26-28 International Lake Chad Conference in Abuja, Nigeria. There will be further bureaucratic steps before the grant can be delivered and the feasibility study can start.

“It is a historic step,” Bonifica CEO Romina Boldrini told EIR. “Italy is giving money for Transaqua. Everybody is expecting Bonifica to start the feasibility study now.”

Marcello Vichi, the head of the Bonifica team that drafted the original Transaqua study in the 1970s, said he is “very satisfied” with the agreement. “Finally, after so many years, Africans and Europeans understood the importance of the project. Now we have to make up that lost time.” The Transaqua project is detailed in the Schiller Institute’s reports “Extending the New Silk Road to Africa and West Asia” and “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge: A Shared Future for Humanity, Vol. II.”