KoBold Metals, the privately held, AI-driven explorer backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, has signed an agreement positioning it to develop the contested Manono lithium project and launch a 1,600-km² exploration blitz across the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“We’re looking to go big in this country… investments could be in the billions,” KoBold’s DRC director-general Benjamin Katabuka told reporters after the signing, pledging thousands of high-paying Congolese jobs and a sweeping digitisation of the nation’s geological data.
KoBold’s pitch rests on its machine learning platform, which “scrapes” historical drill logs and satellite data to pinpoint new deposits. The technology already teased out Zambia’s largest copper find in a century and now underpins the Manono push.
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The agreement rides on last month’s US-brokered peace accord between Kinshasa and Kigali. President Donald Trump hailed the Washington signing as a turning point, warning of “very severe penalties” if Rwanda’s troops fail to withdraw and touting “a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo” for US firms.
Currently, Australia-listed AVZ Minerals is in arbitration after Kinshasa stripped its permit in 2023 and tentatively handed it to China’s Zijin Mining. KoBold must secure exploration licences by month-end and help mediate the dispute before advancing the Roche Dure pit.
The US Commerce Department values the DRC’s copper, cobalt, coltan, and lithium endowment at up to US$24 trillion—yet the country still ranks among the world’s five poorest, according to World Bank. Beijing-linked companies have long dominated Congolese pits and KoBold’s entry is poised to test whether Washington’s mix of diplomacy and Big Tech capital can reverse that balance.
Rwanda-backed M23 rebels still occupy swathes of eastern Congo, and watchdogs have chronicled labour abuses from artisanal mines to industrial sites.
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