Speaking at the U.S.-Africa Energy Forum (USAEF) in Houston on Wednesday, Selam Demissie, Director at the DFC, confirmed the agency is “actively looking” at both upstream and downstream oil and gas infrastructure projects, particularly where U.S. companies are involved or where American-produced energy is being supplied.

“We see ourselves as a risk management strategy for investors,” said Demissie, noting that the DFC is leveraging blended finance solutions – including credit guarantees and political risk insurance – to help de-risk projects and attract private capital. “We’re also supporting transmission and distribution lines, and increasing our efforts to support generation from hydro, geothermal and nuclear.”

Her comments come as African leaders and U.S. investors alike are calling for more robust financing tools and risk mitigation strategies to bridge Africa’s energy access gap. Despite the continent’s vast resource potential, many smaller and mid-size projects struggle to move beyond the pre-feasibility stage due to capital constraints and regulatory uncertainty.

“It’s difficult for small projects to gain traction and to see the pre-feasibility studies for those projects. You need to get into a bankable, pre-feasibility stage to get investors interested,” said Jonathon Tyler, CEO of Symphony Capital. “We also see a lot of solar projects, but they don’t address the baseload issue.”

Jude Kearney, Managing Partner at ASAFO & Co., echoed the sentiment, noting that investors must be brutally candid about scalability and long-term objectives from the outset. “The biggest bottleneck for many small and medium-sized players is lack of funding – followed by government bureaucracy, tariffs and foreign exchange restrictions… but a lot of governance issues are beginning to rectify some of these problems.”

Doug Sheridan, Founder of EnergyPoint Research, added that private equity is likely to play a catalytic role in this next phase of energy development. “The real energy transition in Africa isn’t from fossil fuels to renewables — it’s from potential to realizing that potential. Private equity investors are cost-focused, hyper efficient with their capital, but also focused on growth.”