Congo leader to prospect for better mining deal, improved relations during China visit

With most of his country’s mining industry under Chinese control, Congo President Félix Tshisekedi will visit Beijing this week as the two nations look to resolve mining disputes that had threatened to sour diplomatic relations. Tshisekedi was expected to push Beijing to renegotiate contracts for the US$6.2 billion Sino-Congolese joint venture known as Sicomines, a minerals-for-infrastructure deal that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) signed with Chinese companies in 2008 under former president Joseph Kabila. The DRC may also seek China’s help to fight rebels in eastern Congo. The visit, from May 24 to 29, will be Tshisekedi’s first to China since he was elected president in 2019 and comes ahead of legislative and presidential elections scheduled for December. China looks to West Africa for iron ore supplies DRC Vice-Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula visited China from Sunday ahead of Tshisekedi’s visit. In the meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Monday, Lutundula said the DRC would promote practical cooperation between the two countries in various fields with great enthusiasm and was willing to strengthen communication and coordination with China. Qin said China would push to transform the DRC’s resource advantages into development momentum, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement. The DRC is strategically important for China’s transition to green energy – Beijing sources more than 60 per cent of its cobalt from the country. Cobalt is a key component in batteries for electric vehicles and electronics. Two-way trade with the DRC stood at US$21.9 billion in 2022, a 51.7 per cent increase compared to the previous year, according to data from China’s customs authority. “Lutundula’s visit can be seen as a diplomatic vanguard mission to iron out controversies and to prepare intergovernmental agreements to be announced by the presidents later in the month,” said Tim Zajontz, research fellow at the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch, South Africa. As the end of his first term approaches, Tshisekedi is trying to improve relations with Beijing, according to Christian-Geraud Neema, a Congolese mining analyst and the francophone editor at The China Global South Project. “For the first four years, he was more of an American ally than anything else. He aligned DRC’s diplomatic position with US interests,” Neema said. “We have seen it during the votes about the Ukraine crisis. He went hard on two Chinese major mining projects, with Washington’s blessings. But in the end, I believe he didn’t get the dividend of that hard line against China.” Neema said Tshisekedi would now demonstrate his commitment to maintaining strong ties with China in his meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The DRC has seen few benefits from the Sicomines joint venture, Congolese officials have said, a deal that Tshisekedi described as poorly negotiated. State-owned Congolese mining company Gecamines formed the joint venture with a consortium of Chinese companies led by Sinohydro and China Railway Group to trade copper and cobalt for infrastructure, such as roads and hospitals – with the Chinese side taking a 68 per cent stake in Sicomines. The Chinese companies agreed to invest US$3.2 billion in infrastructure, and another US$3 billion in the mining project itself in Katanga province. But in February, the Congolese General Inspectorate of Finance released a report saying the country had not been adequately compensated for the copper and cobalt reserves it contributed to the deal. The report said Chinese companies had exploited mineral resources worth US$10 billion, but had only built infrastructure estimated to be worth US$822 million. The report demanded that projects worth US$17 billion be added to Sicomines’ infrastructure investment. China’s embassy in the DRC and Sicomines strongly contested the contents of the report, which the embassy said was “full of prejudice”. Zajontz said the Tshisekedi administration considered the deal to unfairly benefit Chinese firms. Zajontz, who is also a lecturer on international relations at Technische Universität Dresden, said the Tshisekedi delegation hoped to localise parts of the mineral-based value chains. “Kinshasa is well aware of the strategic value of the country’s natural resources which increases by the day amid growing geo-economic competition between China and the West,” he said. “Considering the growing global interest in Congo’s minerals, Kinshasa is keen to drive up the price for the dominant position that Chinese firms enjoy in Congo’s extractive industries by demanding more Chinese investments in mineral processing and other value creation on Congolese soil.” Tensions had also been simmering in another mining dispute between China’s CMOC and state-owned Gecamines over royalties from the giant Tenke Fungurume copper and cobalt mine (TFM). The two companies had been at odds since 2021 after Congolese officials accused CMOC of under-reporting copper and cobalt reserves to reduce royalty payments, prompting the establishment of a commission to reassess them. CMOC Group announced last month, however, that it had resolved the 10-month dispute with Gecamines. “Now that the TFM mine issue has been resolved, watch for Tshisekedi to try and remedy the Sicomines deal during his visit to Beijing,” Neema said. Meanwhile, Neema said the Chinese had been supplying drones and other weapons to the DRC, “so this might be an opportunity for the president to acquire more arms to bolster his fight against M23 rebels in the eastern DRC”. Isabelle Minnon, an independent researcher on Chinese-Congolese relations, said the DRC wanted China and other foreign mining companies to invest in local processing and assembly instead of exporting the raw minerals out of the DRC. China says UN Security Council should give smaller nations a greater say “Everything is being done outside the producing countries instead of integrating the producing countries, to avoid certain dangers such as armed conflicts and wars,” said the minister for Congolese mines, Antoinette Nsamba Kalambayi, during the Cobalt Congress earlier this month in Istanbul, Turkey. Kalambayi said the DRC wanted “to develop a value chain for the production of batteries for electric vehicles, and this chain should be controlled from the extraction, processing, manufacturing to assembly”. Minnon said Kalambayi’s remarks suggested that the DRC may want China to show a real willingness to set up a value chain for the production of batteries instead of exporting raw materials such as cobalt, coltan and lithium.