The DFC could more than double its investment in the mining sector in African countries, including DRC, to about $1.4 billion from $750 million invested in 2023 in a major drive to secure future supplies of critical metals, Nisha Biswal, the deputy CEO said.
While some of the financing is targeted for mining projects, the DFC is also allocating money to infrastructure such as roads and power supply to limit investment hurdles that are holding back private sector investment, Biswal added.
"We are leaning in on our own financing, not only in the mineral sector but writ large in places like DRC with the hopes of being able to de-risk and bring in private, you know more private capital," the deputy CEO said on the sidelines of the African Mining Indaba event.
Chinese-state backed mining companies have tightened their hold on minerals including copper, cobalt and lithium in the DRC and the rest of Africa to guarantee future supplies.
Biswal said U.S financing could help widen the pool of investors and introduce competition, adding that Washington could send its biggest delegation ever to this year's African mining conference.
"As long as we using competition to create a race to the top and not a race to the bottom, I think that's a good thing," she said.
The DFC is building a pipeline of projects it plans to invest in, some of which are undergoing screening and due diligence.
"We have a very healthy pipeline that we've built up in critical minerals and you're going to start to see those investments announced as soon as they go through that process," Biswal said.
U.S. authorities are also backing the Lobito rail corridor project that seeks to help ease shipments from the central African copperbelt to Angola's coast on the Atlantic.
The spending will continue even as prices for some commodities such as cobalt have come off because the future fundamentals are still strong, Biswal said.
"Do I wish we had gotten in the game earlier? Of course," Biswal said, adding, "but... DFC came online four and half years ago and I think we've come in really strong. We've scaled up really fast."