Africa will be of growing economic importance in the coming decades and represents a "complex" investment challenge that will be crucial to Europe's future, Italy's finance minister Giovanni Tria said on Thursday.
"Africa is a vast unexplored market where profits can be made," Tria said during a meeting at the Italian finance ministry in Rome with African Development Bank president Akinwumi Adesina.
"But it is also complex and offers major challenges as well as results that are not automatic," said Tria.
Despite the difficulties that may lie ahead, Africa is the part of the world to watch in the next few decades - a fact that Europe needs to grasp, Tria said.
"I think Europe has difficulty believing that its future lies in the South, where there is a continent that has not been fully developed," he said.
