President William Ruto has flown to Rome for a State Visit aimed at placing Kenya at the centre of Italy’s growing economic engagement with Africa. The trip — scheduled to include bilateral talks with Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale Palace and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at Palazzo Chigi — is built around three big asks: reviving the long-stalled Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dam projects, unlocking fresh infrastructure, energy and agriculture investment under Italy’s Mattei Plan, and formalising a series of Memoranda of Understanding that will shape bilateral cooperation into the next development cycle. Ruto will also address the Kenya–Italy Business Forum, meet senior executives at ENI and IFAD, and engage with Italian lawmakers at the Chamber of Deputies. The visit reviews progress since Mattarella’s 2023 State Visit to Kenya and the January 2024 Italy–Africa Summit, when the Mattei Plan was unveiled as a new model of partnership between Rome and the continent.
Key Overview
- Ruto has departed for an official State Visit to Italy, scheduled to hold bilateral talks with President Sergio Mattarella at Quirinale Palace and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at Palazzo Chigi.
- The central agenda item is the acceleration of the stalled Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dam projects, originally contracted to Italian firm CMC Di Ravenna.
- Talks will advance cooperation under Italy’s €5.5 billion Mattei Plan, which names Kenya as one of the priority pilot countries.
- Kenya is targeting 2.5 million irrigated acres within seven years, backed by financing discussions with IFAD, FAO and Italian private sector partners.
- A Kenya–Italy Business Forum will run alongside, targeting investment in infrastructure, energy, irrigation, digital economy, tourism and labour mobility.
- Ruto will also meet ENI CEO Claudio Descalzi, IFAD President Alvaro Lario, and Italy’s Parliament Speaker Lorenzo Fontana.
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The State Visit, announced as Ruto departed for Rome on Sunday, April 19, 2026, is being staged at a moment of unusually dense traffic in Kenya–Italy relations. Italy is in the implementation phase of its signature Africa engagement framework, the Mattei Plan. Kenya is pushing hard to accelerate domestic irrigation and energy infrastructure. And both governments have a set of legacy projects — the Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dams — that each, in different ways, needs to close out.
The visit’s choreography makes the priorities unmistakable. Ruto is expected to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Piazza Venezia before meeting Mattarella at Quirinale Palace for a luncheon, and Meloni later at Palazzo Chigi. The head of state will then address the high-level session of the Kenya–Italy Business Forum and end the second day with an address to Kenyans in the Diaspora. On the third day, according to the official itinerary, Ruto will meet industry CEOs including Claudio Descalzi of ENI and Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, before heading to the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament to meet Speaker Lorenzo Fontana. The visit closes with an address at LUISS University.
State House Spokesperson Hussein Mohamed confirmed that several Memoranda of Understanding and cross-sector agreements are expected to be signed, with the discussions centring on the acceleration of the Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dam projects — now framed by the Ruto administration as part of its broader irrigation strategy. The projects aim to expand irrigated land to 2.5 million acres within seven years, strengthen food security, and support agricultural exports.
The Dam Question: A Scandal the Ruto Government Has Tried to Close
The Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dams are far more than routine infrastructure items on a bilateral agenda; they are the unresolved tail of one of the most consequential financial scandals of Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidency, and a test of whether Italian financing can return to large-scale Kenyan public works without reopening old wounds.
The contracts were awarded to a joint venture that included CMC Di Ravenna Societa Cooperativa, Itinera S.P.A and CMC Di Ravenna–Itinera, with the original €306 million Itare financing package arranged in 2014 by a consortium that included Italian export credit agency SACE, along with Intesa Sanpaolo and BNP Paribas. Arror and Kimwarer, in Elgeyo Marakwet County, followed shortly after. But by September 2019, President Uhuru Kenyatta had cancelled Kimwarer outright and scaled down Arror after a technical committee flagged irregularities, with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations subsequently arresting then-Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich and 15 other officials over an alleged Sh55.8 billion loss linked to the projects.
CMC Di Ravenna filed for bankruptcy protection in Italy, then sued Kenya at the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague demanding approximately Sh12 billion in damages — a figure that observers noted could have escalated to as much as Sh80 billion if the company had pursued the full costs of the projects and associated penalties. Ruto’s administration opted to settle rather than litigate: the Cabinet approved the terms of a negotiated settlement of the commercial contracts and financing agreements for Itare and Arror dams, and the contractor withdrew its arbitration case.
That settlement is the hinge on which the current visit turns. According to reporting by Kenyan outlets ahead of the Rome trip, the Itare dam was left at 27 percent completion, while no substantial construction work was carried out at Arror and Kimwarer despite billions of shillings in advance payments. Construction of Itare and Arror is now set to resume, while progress on Kimwarer remains delayed owing to unresolved technical issues. Ruto’s meetings in Rome are expected to lock in financing, implementation and insurance structures that will be politically durable enough to outlive the scandal’s legacy.
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The Mattei Plan: What Kenya Actually Stands to Gain
Strategically, the dams are the legacy workstream. The Mattei Plan is the future one. Unveiled by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during the January 2024 Italy–Africa Summit, the Plan committed an initial €5.5 billion (approximately $5.9 billion) to nine pilot countries — including Kenya — structured around six action areas: education and training, health, water, agriculture, energy, and physical and digital infrastructure.
Kenya’s role within the Plan is substantive. Italy’s government has highlighted a Kenyan biofuels supply chain initiative targeting the involvement of 400,000 farmers by 2027, while the African Development Bank — which houses the Plan’s multi-donor financing facility — has confirmed that in 2025 the facility approved four operations totalling €28 million, including clean cooking solutions in Kenya. The facility itself was anchored by an initial €100 million contribution from Italy, followed by a $25 million grant from the United Arab Emirates and, in December 2025, a DKK 70 million commitment from Denmark.
Ruto has publicly backed the Plan despite criticism from some African observers that the initial figures were underwhelming. As Kenyan reporting has noted, he endorsed Italy’s framework as a demonstration of Europe’s sincere interest in the continent, even amid concerns about the limited first-round funding. The current visit is, in practice, Kenya’s opportunity to translate that political endorsement into sector-specific agreements that deliver projects on the ground.
Investment Promotion: The Kenya–Italy Business Forum
Running in parallel with the political meetings, the Kenya–Italy Business Forum is designed to package Kenya’s investment opportunities for Italian private sector players and multilateral institutions. According to the State House briefing accompanying the trip, these include IFAD and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, both headquartered in Rome — which gives the visit an unusually integrated mix of bilateral and multilateral touchpoints in a single agenda.
The forum’s scope is broad. Officials have said it will facilitate discussions on financing mechanisms for priority projects and deepen collaboration in infrastructure, energy, irrigation, tourism, the digital economy and labour mobility. For Italy, labour mobility is strategically important; the Meloni government has consistently framed the Mattei Plan as part of a wider effort to combat irregular migration across the Mediterranean by investing in economic opportunities at origin.
For Kenya, the commercial upside is equally real. Italian firms have existing footprints in Kenyan energy — geothermal cooperation has been flagged by Italian strategists as evidence of investment in Africa’s energy transition, and ENI has been expanding biofuels and refining activity in the country. Meeting Descalzi directly signals that Ruto wants to firm up the commercial layer beneath the Mattei Plan’s framing — moving from concept papers to project-specific commitments.
Policy Alignment: Reviewing What Mattarella Started in 2023
A key function of the visit is continuity. Italian President Sergio Mattarella paid a four-day State Visit to Kenya in March 2023, a trip during which Ruto publicly commended Rome for supporting Kenya’s Universal Health Coverage initiative. At the state dinner at State House Nairobi, Ruto said his government welcomed the positive steps taken to establish Nairobi as a medical hub, in cooperation with Italy.
Prime Cabinet Secretary and Cabinet Secretary for Foreign and Diaspora Affairs Musalia Mudavadi has said that preparations for the Rome trip were completed following detailed briefings from senior officials in the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs. Mudavadi noted that the visit will review progress since Mattarella’s 2023 State Visit and advance cooperation in water, agriculture, energy, health, tourism and digital transformation. Talks will focus on mobilising financing for priority projects, accelerating implementation of existing agreements and expanding labour mobility, education, and research cooperation between the two countries.
Ruto himself attended the Italy-Africa Summit in Rome in January 2024, where, in his capacity as Chair of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change, he was scheduled to deliver a keynote address. That summit, themed “A Bridge for Common Growth,” brought together 20 African heads of state to discuss food security, education, energy security, and infrastructure development. The 2026 Rome visit effectively picks up where that summit left off — with Kenya now positioning itself as the most advanced test case for Mattei Plan delivery in East Africa.
The Blue Economy Layer and What Comes Next
The Rome trip is also landing on top of a fresh round of bilateral agreements. In February 2026, Kenya and Italy agreed to strengthen cooperation on sustainable fisheries, renewable energy solutions for aquaculture and Blue Economy research collaboration — signalling that the partnership is broadening beyond the well-worn infrastructure, energy and agriculture triad into less obvious sectors. Ruto’s State Visit gives both governments a political platform to elevate those technical agreements and anchor them in a wider partnership framework.
Three outcomes will determine whether the visit is judged a success. First, the concrete revival of Itare and Arror — with visible groundworks, a clear financing architecture and timelines the Kenyan public can verify. Second, the conversion of Mattei Plan framing into specific Kenyan project commitments backed by Italian and multilateral capital, including through IFAD and FAO co-financing. And third, the delivery of the less glamorous but strategically important agenda items: labour mobility arrangements, expanded educational exchanges, Blue Economy research funding, and the digital economy commitments that tie Kenyan start-ups into Italian and European value chains.
Italy brings leverage to each of those workstreams. It is one of the larger European donors active in Africa, a G7 member, and the sponsor of a plan that — whatever its critics say about scale — has real political weight within both Rome and Brussels. If the Rome visit produces signed MoUs rather than communiqués, Kenya walks away with a more structured pipeline of European investment at a moment when it badly needs concessional and blended financing to close its infrastructure gap.
Outlook: A High-Stakes Trip at a High-Pressure Moment
Ruto’s choice to invest a three-day visit in Rome reflects a simple diagnosis: Kenya’s development agenda needs external capital at a scale the domestic budget cannot provide, and Italy is one of the more willing partners within an EU that is otherwise distracted by its own fiscal and geopolitical pressures. By packaging dam revival, Mattei Plan delivery, multilateral engagement with Rome-based UN agencies, and private sector deal-making into a single trip, the Kenyan government is trying to compress what would normally be several years of diplomatic activity into one concentrated push.
The political risk, of course, is that the Italian dam legacy reasserts itself. Any hint that the revived projects are proceeding without adequate safeguards against the irregularities of the previous decade will attract immediate scrutiny from civil society and parliament. But the political reward is significant: a visibly delivered wave of Italian-backed irrigation, energy and agricultural investment would hand the Ruto administration a tangible answer to criticism that his government has talked more about development than it has delivered.
If the MoUs signed in Rome match the ambition of the agenda that took him there, the Italy visit may be remembered as the moment Kenya converted the rhetoric of the Mattei Plan into a pipeline of projects. If they do not, it will simply mark another round of meetings in a long and, so far, uneven bilateral history.
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