- Felix Tshisekedi, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has called for a review of mining contracts signed with China in 2008 by his predecessor Joseph Kabila.
- He pointed out that they were more of exploitation contracts that made the people of DRC poorer and miners rich.
In a statement issued after a recent cabinet meeting, Felix Tshisekedi, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has called for a review of mining contracts signed with China in 2008 by his predecessor Joseph Kabila. He has demanded “technical and financial details of Sino-Congolese contracts” to be presented for reveiw at the next meeting.
The former President Kabila was in office from 2001 to 2019. In 2008, he negotiated a highly controversial minerals-for-infrastructure deal with the Chinese valued at $9bn. However, the deal had to be cut to two-thirds of that amount under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).As a result, only $2.74bn has been disbursed by the Chinese so far.
Addressing a meeting at the mining town of Kolwezi in May, Tshisekedi stated his plan to renegotiate mining contracts, particularly those concluded by Kabila.He pointed out that they were more of exploitation contracts that made the people of DRC poorer and miners rich. To rectify this, DRC needs to renegotiate with the miners for fairer returns to the country to build its development activities.
According to the statistics of China Africa Research Initiative, China has extended 53 loans to the DRC between 2000 and 2018 mostly focused on the power, transport, and mining sectors. China also extended some relief to the DRC to deal with the economic fallout from COVID19 during the the current year that spared the DRC from repaying its interest-free loans from China that matured at the end of 2020.
