The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) plans to establish a dedicated exploration development investment company within the next 12 months, in a move to address Africa’s persistent mineral exploration funding gap and strengthen the continent’s control over its vast natural resources.
The proposed investment vehicle is expected to support the discovery and definition of new mineral reserves, expand domestic mineral production and lay the groundwork for greater local value addition across Africa’s mining industry.
Franklin Edochie, deputy director and head of the Metals and Mining Desk at AFC, disclosed the plan at African Mining Week in Cape Town recently, stressing that the continent’s ability to capture more value from its mineral endowment depends on sustained investment in exploration.
“If we don’t invest in African exploration, we risk losing control over where our resources end up,” Edochie said, describing exploration financing as a strategic priority for the multilateral pan-African financial institution.
The proposed initiative comes amid growing competition among global economies for critical minerals used in energy transition technologies, advanced manufacturing and industrial development. For African countries, the challenge is increasingly how to convert their mineral endowments into domestic industrial capacity, rather than remain suppliers of largely unprocessed raw materials.
Edochie said exploration investment was central to this objective because local processing, beneficiation and downstream manufacturing strategies ultimately depend on the identification and commercial definition of viable mineral deposits.
“Investing in exploration is one of our primary targets because local value-addition strategies depend on discovering and defining new reserves,” he said.
Africa’s mineral development ambitions have long been constrained by inadequate funding for early-stage exploration, a capital-intensive and risky undertaking in which commercial returns may take years to materialise. The funding gap can leave promising deposits underexplored, delay the development of new mines and limit the ability of African economies to plan industrial investments around reliable domestic mineral supplies.
By creating a dedicated investment company, AFC intends to strengthen the financing architecture for exploration and support the development of mineral assets that could underpin future mining and industrial projects. Details of the vehicle’s proposed capitalisation, investment structure and initial project pipeline were not disclosed.
Edochie also cautioned that reliance on external capital could expose African mineral development priorities to geopolitical considerations, with international funding decisions sometimes favouring the strategic interests of capital providers over the long-term development requirements of host economies.
He argued that continent-led exploration financing would help African countries retain greater influence over which resources are developed, how projects are structured and where the resulting economic benefits accrue.
Beyond mineral discovery, AFC is expanding its infrastructure investment ambitions to address the power and logistics constraints that continue to undermine the competitiveness of African mining and manufacturing.
Edochie said the corporation wanted to increase its investments in regional ports and power corridors, with particular attention to ensuring that major industrial zones, including the Copperbelt, had sufficient electricity to support mining operations and associated processing industries.
The Copperbelt, which spans parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia, is a major centre of copper and cobalt production. Its importance to global critical-mineral supply chains makes reliable power, efficient transport infrastructure and expanded processing capacity essential to efforts to retain more mineral value within the region.
The AFC’s planned initiative comes as the DRC seeks to improve geological knowledge of its territory and attract investment into mineral regions that remain insufficiently explored.
Freddy Mwamba Kanyinku, director general of the DRC’s Centre d’Expertise, d’Evaluation et de Certification (CEEC), said the country’s ongoing national geological mapping programme was creating new opportunities for international investors by improving access to information about its mineral resources.
According to Kanyinku, high-precision geological mapping has so far covered only 19 percent of the DRC’s territory, leaving substantial areas without the detailed geological information needed to assess their commercial mineral potential.
“Eighty percent of our land remains unexplored,” he said, highlighting the scale of the opportunity available to investors willing to participate in further geological surveys and resource evaluation.
Although the figures cited point to the enormous scope for further exploration, geological mapping coverage and unexplored territory are not necessarily equivalent to proven mineral reserves. The commercial potential of individual deposits will depend on subsequent exploration, technical evaluation, infrastructure availability and economic feasibility.
Kanyinku said the DRC was also modernising its geological evaluation processes and procuring advanced survey equipment to improve the quality of information available to investors.
The reforms, he explained, were changing how foreign investors engage with the country and reducing historical barriers to accessing its mineral opportunities.
“Previously, to invest in the DRC, you had to go through Belgium first. That is no longer the case — investors can now come directly to us,” he said.
Kanyinku added that the country had secured partnerships with countries including the United States, while maintaining that significant opportunities remained across mineral-bearing areas yet to receive detailed exploration.
The DRC is already a major global producer of copper and cobalt, minerals central to electric vehicles, battery manufacturing, power infrastructure and other industrial applications. However, a clearer understanding of its broader geological potential could help identify additional deposits, diversify future production and improve the basis for long-term investment decisions.
