Cooperation is not an option, it's a method
Rome, May 26 - 27. At the Corsie Sistine and the Auditorium della Conciliazione, the Third National Conference on Development Cooperation brought together institutions, businesses, NGOs, and international organizations to discuss the future of Italy’s role in global development cooperation.
Organized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and AICS, the conference served as a key moment to reflect on priorities, partnerships, and the challenges ahead.
Koalisation was there.
CO[OPERA], the name says it all
CO[OPERA]. The brackets around the word “opera” are not a graphic flourish. They are a statement: cooperation means enabling people and organizations from different worlds to work together each with its own language, incentives, and pace.
There is no cooperation without friction. And when you know how to harness it, friction becomes productive.
That is exactly what we do every day: building sustainable value chains between Africa and Italy.
The questions that matter
The conference featured ten thematic sessions over two days, covering topics ranging from development finance and the Mattei Plan to knowledge ecosystems and major humanitarian crises.
The thread running through all of them and the one that resonates most closely with us is this: how do we build partnerships that are not simply aid disguised as cooperation?
The session on development finance brought to the table questions that feel particularly close to home. How do we mobilize private capital towards value chains that make both economic and ethical sense? How do we make business models centered on local communities understandable, credible, and attractive to both investors and end consumers?
We do not have all the answers.
But we know we are asking the right questions.
Why we were there and why we'll be back
Koalisation is neither an NGO nor a traditional trading company.
We are a Benefit Corporation operating in Zambia since 2023, working across agroforestry, beekeeping, clean cooking, and water access. Our goal is simple: to transform impact into a real economic asset measurable, verifiable, and transferable.
Fuel Different, our honey from Zambia, is a tangible answer to a question that echoed throughout CO[OPERA] in many different forms: how do you turn a value chain into a tool for development? How do you ensure that the value generated truly reaches local communities instead of being lost along the way?
CO[OPERA] showed us a living ecosystem: institutions looking for credible partners, and businesses that no longer want to choose between profit and impact.
Next time, we will return not only to listen.