KoBold Metals, the mining startup backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, is expanding its footprint into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with plans to invest billions into the African nation’s large endowment of resources, the Financial Times reported.
Benjamin Katabuka, the country’s newly appointed director general, told the British newspaper that KoBold is looking to “go big” in the DRC, currently the world’s biggest producer of cobalt and the leading copper producer on the continent.
He added the company plans to apply for licences to explore for these two critical minerals as well as lithium, of which the DRC holds significant deposits but has yet to fully unlock. These investments could potentially be “in the billions”, Katabuka said, as cited by the Financial Times article published late Saturday.
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