Italy’s Prodi Puts Forward Involving China in Transaqua Project To Replenish Lake Chad

re posted from                            EIR DAILY ALERT SERVICE

Italy’s Prodi Puts Forward Involving  China in Transaqua Project To Replenish Lake Chad

Nov. 18 (EIRNS)—Former EU Commission President and former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi called for a major international effort, involving China, to build the Transaqua infrastructure to replenish Lake Chad. Prodi spoke at the final roundtable of a seminar dedicated to Lake Chad and sponsored by the Turin Center of African Studies Nov. 9-13.

Prodi, who had previously served as UN special envoy for the Sahel and had publicly declared that the Transaqua water-transfer program was “too expensive,” appears to have changed his mind and dedicated his pre-recorded video intervention entirely to an endorsement of Transaqua as the only solution for Lake Chad, calling for a concerted international effort to build the Italian-born project.

Prodi accurately described Transaqua as an integrated water, energy, and transport infrastructure which will take only 5% of the Congo River, building dams on its tributaries and bringing water to Lake Chad through a navigable canal. The only mistake he made was to speak about the Ubangi River, the largest tributary of the Congo, instead of the Ubangi basin, whose water will be collected by Transaqua through the Central African Republic section of the waterway.

Since the political and economic hurdles are big, the international community at the highest level must be involved, Prodi said, calling for the UN, the EU, and the African Union to join forces to finance and build the project. And China: The New Silk Road, Prodi said, has a problem, namely, it has been so far a Chinese project. Let us involve China in something, let us involve China in building Transaqua.

The video of Prodi’s presentation, in Italian with English subtitles took place at the seminar on “Water Diplomacy and a Culture of Sustainability. The Basin of Lake Chad,” at the Centro Piemontese Studi Africani (Center for African Studies) in Turin; the video is at the bottom of the webpage for the panel “The Live Roundtable on the Lake Chad: The Diplomatic Dialogue.”

Most participants in the Roundtable endorsed Transaqua, except, predictably, the representative of the EU Commission. Francesca Di Mauro, head of the Central and Southern Africa desk of the Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, almost had a fit over Transaqua, saying “it is a bit of a chimera,” it is too expensive, too many countries must reach agreement, etc. (A quick glance at her Twitter account shows that she is a Great Reset fanatic: “Temporary lower CO2 emissions during C-19 lockdowns says Nature paper; −17% by April compared to 2019, half from lower surface transport. But impact on 2020 could only be −4% to −7%… only a Global Green Recovery can influence future emissions paths.”)

The day before, on Nov. 12, the seminar had featured Engineer Andrea Mangano, a veteran of the Bonifica team that had developed the original Transaqua idea in the 1970s. In an interview format entitled “Lake Chad and Infrastructures: Challenges and Ideas,” he presented the updated version of the project—similar to what Mangano, himself, and other Bonifica officials have presented at Schiller Institute and EIR events in recent years.

Source: EIR Daily Alert Service

https://larouchepub.com/

Leave a Reply