For the second year in a row, MatchMaker Albania is taking place in Tirana, which has become a strategic meeting place for investors, companies and local and international institutions. Over 1,000 participants and more than 400 planned meetings under the organization of the Albanian Investment Development Agency (AIDA) will promote Albania as a reliable and innovative destination for investments.
At the opening ceremony, Prime Minister Edi Rama praised the role of Albanian youth and the dedication of the AIDA team in developing the MatchMaker platform. He highlighted the progress and emphasized that Albania has become a destination for international investors.
The Prime Minister also mentioned Albania’s transformation from a country with limited resources and temporary tourism, to an open and diversified economy, where Albanian exports now reach around 100 countries.
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Speech by Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you!
Thank you to everyone who came here from other countries and destinations and thank you to everyone who is here representing the Albanian entrepreneurial community.
I want to make sure everyone knows that the dog that opened this session is made in Albania and is the work of an extraordinary team of talented young Albanians, who I hope will do more and will be a great benefit to our field, our military industry. So thank you!
To talk about this event, I want to quote a late friend, a famous Albanian writer, Moikom Zeqo, who in a work dedicated to the history of the Church of Labova e Kryqit, which is a very beautiful church near Gjirokastra, wrote about the Saint Mary fair, organized at that time, under the direct supervision of Justinian in the 6th century.
The day before the fair, traveling merchants arrived from Gjirokastra, from Libohova to sell their crafts and food products in a place known as Lëmi i Valleve. The buyers, the 10-12 thousand pilgrims who spent three nights of prayer inside the church. Later, fairs have always been a way to tell stories in the same place. The first fair after the fall of the communist regime Fiera del Levante. In the early 1930s this connection began, but it took 50 years for it to return again. During the first ever Levante fair in the 1930s, Albania tried to introduce its thermal baths and a few of its food and textile products to the tourism market.
At the reopened Levante fair, we saw the beginning of a new story, which began with a free labor force, since poverty was an advantage to attract foreigners who were looking for places where they could outsource their activities. So this place became the space where the Valentinos, Dolce Gabanas and others found their paradise, quite profitable, of a very free labor force, thanks to extraordinarily dedicated women.
Then Albania entered a new phase, followed by mystery box fairs, ready to be explored as an exotic promise. And here we are today. In a different era, in a different generation of entrepreneurship, a different time for us, as much as it is for the world. And in fact, the best thing is that today Albania reflects the times of the world and meanwhile just a few weeks ago, the World Fair in Berlin showed us that Albania is no longer a promised land for a better tomorrow, but a place that everyone should see, and where everyone should jump in and act as if there is no tomorrow. Ready to welcome, ready to offer, ready to build ecosystems that adapt to the needs of entrepreneurs, ready to connect businesses, people, ambitions.
Matchmaker started as a success story thanks to this person, the brilliant and ambitious individual who runs the AIDA agency and I want to thank him and his team for bringing it, taking this agency to another level. However, it is worth saying that they can do it, because they have a lot to show.
Today it is easier than it has ever been to get people to come and return to Albania.
This fair has four areas that actually reflect the essence of the change that our economic model has brought, first of all of course tourism and modern urban projects. From a place of adventure tourism for only one or two months a year and for a limited number of people, Albania is now a place where some of the biggest changes are taking place, not only in terms of numbers, but in terms of a very diverse portfolio of opportunities, ranging from individual tourists who like to “get lost” in the mountain peaks to large groups of tourists who want to come, explore our capital, our coast, valleys, lakes, agriculture, our agrotourism and so on. So, this is the place, without a doubt!
And we are very happy to see that not only our ambition, but also the ambition of those who turn their eyes to Albania as a land of
official information
https://www.kryeministria.al/newsroom/matchmaker-albania-2026-shqiperia-promovon-mundesite-per-biznes-dhe-investime/