Washington Lit the Fuse for Africa's Energy Explosion

Four years after TotalEnergies vacated its Afungi site in northern Mozambique amid civil unrest, the company restarted its $20 billion liquefied natural gas project. The gas had not moved. The geology had not improved. What changed sat 8,000 miles away at the U.S. Export-Import Bank, where a newly appointed board reauthorized a $4.7 billion loan that had been gathering dust.

With every day, a surge in oil and gas development is becoming the norm across Africa. Two factors are responsible for the change in the continent’s energy politics. The first came from Washington. The second followed in financial markets, boardrooms, and governments around the world.

U.S. Administration Spurs Energy Proliferation

The unlocking began on January 20, 2025, when the White House issued Executive Order 14154, "Unleashing American Energy." The order made energy abundance an explicit instrument of American statecraft. It ordered every agency to hunt down and dismantle rules constructed around emissions targets, to weigh affordability ahead of carbon accounting, and to promote the export of American fuels and equipment.

Two further moves compounded the effect. Washington began its exit from the Paris Agreement, which stripped federal agencies of any obligation to screen their financing against treaty targets and demoted the “carbon footprint” from a gatekeeping criterion to a memory.