‘The Tip of the Spear’: Blinken Among Officials Honoring DFC’s 5 Years of Impact
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan joined U.S. lawmakers and leaders from government and business around the world on Monday, Dec. 9, to mark DFC’s fifth anniversary and celebrate the ways the young agency has earned a place at the forefront of U.S. national security and foreign development.
Since its formation under the 2019 U.S. BUILD Act, DFC has become, as CEO Scott Nathan said, “a major player in the global development finance landscape.” Its portfolio as of the end of 2024 is nearly $50 billion, more than doubling since 2020. It has active investments in 114 countries, committing more than $12 billion in new transactions in 2024 alone.
“With bipartisan support, DFC has been able to grow in size and capacity and meaningfully increase output. And we have done this while remaining cost-effective, offering good bang for the taxpayers’ buck,” Nathan told the gathered audience.
“We should not measure DFC’s success by investment volume alone,” noted USAID Administrator Samantha Power, a keynote speaker at the event. “Instead, we should get behind the numbers and look at the impact of these investments on U.S. foreign policy interests and on development outcomes.
“Ukraine, in an active war, would not have been a natural fit” for the U.S. Government development agencies that preceded DFC, Power offered as an example. “But the creation of the DFC has expanded the United States’ toolkit.”
Power touted DFC’s financing to help Ukraine’s small businesses continue operating during the ongoing war, so they could continue to employ workers and provide vital goods and services, adding, “if the Ukrainian economy collapsed, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could have won this war without firing another shot.”
Other leaders who spoke at the event highlighted DFC’s groundbreaking work in other critical sectors from infrastructure to healthcare. Geoffrey Pyatt was serving as U.S. ambassador to Greece when DFC was founded and later committed financing infrastructure improvements in the country — a time when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had already been making its own investments for years. He described the BUILD Act as “the single-most transformative development during my six years as ambassador in terms of this strategic competition with China.”
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan described DFC as “a bipartisan priority,” created by the Trump administration, strengthened during the Biden administration, and one that must remain a bipartisan priority as it faces congressional reauthorization in 2025.
“President Biden often says that our world stands at an inflection point, a point where the decisions we make now will determine the course of our future for decades to come,” Sullivan said in a keynote address. “In just five short years, the Development Finance Corporation and the work so many of you have done all around the world, including through these larger initiatives like [the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment], has set that course on a better path for our nation and for nations around the world.”
Other officials from foreign governments, other development finance institutions, the private sector, and nonprofits discussed several other ways in which their partnerships with DFC have supported its core mission to drive development impact, advance foreign policy priorities, and strengthen national security through the mobilization of capital to worthy projects and companies abroad.
Here’s what they said:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken
In a keynote address, Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized the value DFC brings to development and diplomacy initiatives across the U.S. Government.
“From enhancing food security to addressing the climate crisis to promoting inclusive opportunity, DFC has been the tip of the spear in all of our efforts — committing now a record $12 billion across 44 countries just in this year alone,” Blinken added. “Not only does leveraging private capital allow us to invest significantly more than our traditional foreign assistance would allow; it also yields returns that can be re-invested in other initiatives.”
Kenyan President William Ruto
In a keynote address, Kenyan President William Ruto lauded the more than $1 billion in investments that DFC made in Kenya’s private sector. These projects have enhanced digital connectivity for underserved populations, benefited smallholder farmers, bolstered the electric vehicle industry, and diversified Kenya’s green industrialization initiative.
USAID Administrator Samantha Power
On DFC and USAID’s focus on markets that are “fragile, difficult to reach, and conflict-prone,” USAID Administrator Samantha Power said in her keynote address,
“Hear this: this is a necessary approach when more than two billion people are now in fragile and conflict-affected regions. These regions, also — if you hear nothing else, hear this — are home to important resources, like critical minerals that are vital for national security.
“The PRC, of course, already has a head start in this space, as it produces 85 to 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths, and multiple other critical minerals,” Power added. “So we can’t afford to focus only on private sector-led growth in stable environments, and that is why this USAID-DFC partnership is so rich and so impactful and going places.”
Supply Chains of the Future
Geoffrey Pyatt, Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources at the State Department, discussed the importance of DFC’s contributions to the Minerals Security Partnership Finance Network, a partnership of 14 countries and the European Union designed to “identify key projects the U.S. does not want to see fall into the hands of China, and to crowd-in finance to make those projects bigger.
“In that regard, DFC is by far the key enabler of the USG’s participation in the MSP partnership,” he said, citing DFC projects in Mozambique, Angola, and Tanzania, “all focused on these key energy minerals which would not have gotten over the line to [the final investment decision] without DFC’s ability to come in,” adding “We have to think of these energy minerals not of being boring commodities, but as a part of our national security strategy.”
Pyatt also cited the passage of the BUILD Act, which formed DFC, in 2019 when he was serving as U.S. ambassador to Greece. The subsequent $125 million investment by DFC into the Elefsina shipyard in Greece “breathed new life into an asset that is important to the European economy,” Pyatt said, but also to the United States, allowing, for example, U.S. European Command to service and repair Navy ships there. The expanded shipyard “facilitates the investments Greece is making in off-shore wind and in [liquid natural gas]. That transaction would not have happened without DFC coming to the table.”
The BUILD Act — Then and Now
Several of the so-called “Godfathers of the BUILD Act” reunited to discuss their vision for the legislation that founded DFC and how it has materialized in the subsequent years.
“Whether it’s in Ecuador or whether it’s in Sri Lanka, whether it’s in the Philippines or whether it’s in the DRC, DFC has helped finance private sector investments in everything from entrepreneurship,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), one of the co-authors of the BUILD Act, said, “from smallholder farmers, to transportation, to storage, to modernizing agricultural systems in ways that provide alternatives and options that allow us not only to be hoped for as an economic partner, but to be actually on the ground a provider of economic opportunity and choice.”
“On the way home [from Africa], we were thinking about how to move countries from aid to trade,” former Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL), who introduced the House version of the BUILD Act legislation, said of a congressional delegation trip in which he participated. “It was by having a vehicle strong enough that we could go in there and do significant infrastructure. I think the BUILD Act accomplished that.”
Infrastructure
David Moinina Sengeh, Chief Minister of Sierra Leone, noted that DFC’s investments are among the biggest per capita of any country globally. And noted the “very high impact story” in Sierra Leone as a result.
Earlier this year, DFC and Sierra Leone announced $412 million in financing and political risk insurance to the Nant Energy project, which is expected to nearly double Sierra Leone’s energy capacity and strengthen its ability to draw outside investment. Last year, a $150 million loan financed the expansion, renovation, and operation of the Freetown International Airport in Sierra Leone.
“This is different than previous discussion 10, 20 years ago, which was all about aid,” Sengeh said, adding that now “we’re having a conversation about shared values, focused on our ambition and our vision for our people, for impact. And ensuring that impact makes sense for our investors in the U.S. and our investors in Sierra Leone.”
