A new training course that opened on 5 October is teaching heritage workers from nine African countries how to fight the illegal trade in cultural objects, with instruction from Italy's specialist art police. It is the first course to emerge from a three-year agreement between Italy's National School of Heritage and Cultural Activities and the École du Patrimoine Africain in Porto-Novo, Benin, covering training and research in heritage and museum management.

The participants come from Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Morocco, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia. Their classes, led in part by the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, cover collection documentation, provenance research, digitising inventories, international cooperation and tracing objects, the practical skills needed to spot looted or forged material. The unit, founded in 1969, says it has recovered more than three million cultural items and seized over a million fakes. It is rivalled only recently by the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, with which it often collaborates.

The programme sits within Italy's Mattei Plan for Africa, launched by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in 2024 to build cooperation and sustainable development with African nations. Italy's culture minister is reported as describing the fight against illicit trafficking as a shared responsibility that needs specialist expertise and collaboration between institutions, and as presenting the agreement as consolidating Italy's training role. The Benin school's director, Franck Ogou, is reported as calling the course evidence of a renewed friendship between Italy and the school, and looking forward to a long collaboration.