The Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, tested positive for Covid-19 and is asymptomatic. Representing the Government in the missions in the Republic of Angola and the Republic of Congo, scheduled for Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 April, will be Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and Ecological Transition Minister Roberto Cingolani. This is what sources from Palazzo Chigi explained.
The trip to African countries is part of the government’s strategy to free Italy from its dependence on Russian gas following the war in Ukraine. Supply agreements have already been signed with Algeria (where, in the presence of the premier, an agreement has been signed for 9 billion cubic meters of additional supplies) and Egypt (a contract for 3 billion cubic meters more than Gnl part of Eni which, however, agitates the majority because of the Regeni murder affair on which the Egyptian government is building a wall).
In the new mission in Africa, the Italian premier was supposed to meet the president of Angola João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço on Wednesday 20 and the day after that of Congo, Denis Sassou N’Guesso. The absence of the premier does not stop the mission: to represent the executive there will be the ministers Di Maio and Cingolani, present in the first stage of Algiers with the premier.
Draghi, 74, received three doses of the Covid vaccine. Last November 24 at a press conference he had replied in the affirmative to those who asked him if he had been given the so-called “booster”. The first dose was being AstraZeneca, the Pfizer booster.