The American development agency, Trump’s armed wing to counter China’s influence on the continent, has devoted nearly half of its new investments to Mozambican gas projects.
The United States has guaranteed up to 1.7 billion dollars a gas mega-project in northern Mozambique, rich in gas but plagued by an Islamist insurgency, announced Thursday the U.S. Embassy in Maputo.
The U.S. Financing Agency for International Development (DFC) has “agreed to guarantee up to 1.7 billion dollars against political risks to support the commercialization of natural gas reserves” in the Rovuma Basin in Mozambique, the embassy said in a statement.
This guarantee will cover the construction and operation of a natural gas liquefaction plant and the facilities of energy giants including the American ExxonMobil, the French Total, and the Italian Eni. This project, one of the largest investments on the African continent in decades, is located in the Cabo Delgado province on the border with Tanzania.
A poor province with a Muslim majority, the region has been plagued since 2017 by violent attacks by Islamist groups recently affiliated with the Islamic State (EI) group. The gas project has not been targeted, but these attacks pose a threat to this investment estimated at more than $60 billion. The violence has so far caused the death of more than 1,500 people and displaced more than 250,000 people, according to NGOs and the UN.
Despite repeated promises by President Filipe Nyusi, the sending of military reinforcements and the use of foreign mercenaries, the Maputo regime has so far proved incapable of restoring order. Since August 12, Islamists affiliated with the Islamic State Group have occupied the port city of Macimboa da Praia. This strategic port in northern Mozambique is used, among other things, to supply the country’s offshore gas exploitation.
As a poor country, Mozambique is counting on gas exploitation to increase its revenues and become one of the world’s main exporters of natural gas.
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