US steps up competition against China with US$4.7 billion loan for Mozambique gas project

Name: How China is reshaping its economic ties with Africa
Uploaded: 2025-04-09T08:00:10.000Z
Duration: 16 min 9 s
Description: How China is reshaping its economic ties with Africa

Lawyer sees contest for share of African markets a bigger motivator for US project financing than national security

Reading Time:3 minutes

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An artist’s impression of the proposed Mozambique LNG project, which has received a boost from a US$4.7 billion loan as the US attempts to curb Chinese influence in Africa. Photo: Mozambique LNG.

Jevans Nyabiage

Published: 4:00pm, 9 Apr 2025

The construction of a multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas plant in Mozambique is set to resume after the administration of US President Donald Trump approved a US$4.7 billion loan in a move to bolster American companies against their Chinese competitors in Africa.

Last month, the US Export-Import Bank (Exim) reapproved the loan to support the export of American equipment and services for the development and construction of the US$20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project on the Afungi Peninsula in northern Mozambique under the French oil company, TotalEnergies.

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How China is reshaping its economic ties with Africa

It is a major feat for the American export credit agency. The loan is the biggest in Africa in US Exim Bank’s 91-year history as America moves to invest in strategic industries to counter China’s influence on the continent.

It entails providing a loan guarantee for the supply of American equipment for use by TotalEnergies to produce LNG.

The financing is part of Washington’s aim to make American companies and suppliers more competitive, especially against Chinese and Russian companies.

US Exim Bank last month stated that before the 2019 board approval of the LNG project, “Exim was told that China and Russia originally were slated to finance the deal, a factor important to the United States’ national security interests, allowing the transaction to be included as part of Exim’s China and Transformation Exports Programme (CTEP)”.