Palazzo Africa

It is no surprise, therefore, that in 1960 the Fair Board decided to transform the Pavilion of Nations—designed by Angelo Bianchetti and Cesare Pia and built after the war to be the fulcrum of the fairgrounds—into the International Trade Centre (ITC).

During the Milan Fair, the pavilion was also used for collective exhibitions and initiatives to jointly promote African countries.

In the following years, as many as twenty African governments chose to transform their spaces in the pavilion into permanent trade offices for the European market.

The features of the new pavilion and its value for the strategic development of the Milan Fair were outlined by secretary-general Michele Guido Franci in an article for La Fiera di Milano: “The Africa Pavilion represents the first European initiative conceived for the specific purpose of fostering direct ties with the official trade representatives of an entire continent.

The institution can legitimately consider itself an effective and practical new way of responding to the opportunities signalled by the international investment market. […] This modern centre is set up with trade offices designed according to extremely functional criteria.

They each have a floor plan of 90m2, of which 25 is space for the exhibition of local products.

With these markets, the possibilities for Italy to establish economic relations are a high-stakes game to be played with the offer of capital goods, machinery, production systems, and manufactured goods, but above all through partnership agreements and technical assistance, and the organization of joint ventures to create consortiums for the management of services.

The entire trade strategy with these important areas is in fact changing profoundly, as business deals are no longer about supplying manufactured goods in exchange for other manufactured or semi-finished goods, but are branching out in different directions. Business deals are increasingly made for the supply of an idea of a global market.”