Mineral Wealth of the Congo

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China in Africa | photo illustration by Plamen Petkov

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China in Africa (Part 1)

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China in Africa (Part 2) Mozambique: A Chain Saw for Every Tree

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China in Africa (Part 3) Zambia: China's Mine Shaft

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China in Africa (Part 5) Equatorial Guinea: A Strongman Turns East

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China in Africa (Part 6) Endgame: Hypocrisy, Blindness, and the Doomsday Scenario

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The Omnivore

One UN report after another has laid out the wreckage from Congo's mineral-centric scrum: the looting of $5 billion of the state's mineral assets by an "elite network" of Congolese, Zimbabweans, and Belgian businessmen and politicians; rogue investors and their overseas bagmen, stretching from a company in Cleveland to tax-haven shells in the Caymans; and evidence of Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe "systematically exploiting" Congolese resources. As a Zimbabwean defense minister mildly noted of Congo, "A number of Zimbabwean businesses are taking advantage of the goodwill there. If they don't, others will."

"Put the Chinese in the bush," Victor Kasongo tells me, "and they survive with a bowl of rice. Europeans cost us too much. They need a satellite dish to watch rugby, casinos for the weekend. The Chinese just work, like soldiers."

I am sitting with Kasongo, Congo's most powerful mining official, in his office, which overlooks a squalid, windowless government building. An intensely focused technocrat in a square-cut suit, Kasongo was fresh from a trip to Beijing; scattered on the desk in front of him lay a dozen Chinese business cards. "Americans are focused on oil, but they're not focused on Africa for business," he tells me. "Americans are dormant economically."

I had arrived at a turning point for Congo. Kasongo and his colleagues were in the throes of a decision that will define the country's future for decades to come. The Chinese had recently offered up a then-secret multibillion-dollar mining-and-infrastructure package; Joseph Kabila's government was trying to decide whether to accept. If it did, the deal would mark China's largest single commitment in Africa up to that point, and in essence remake the economic map of the continent. If it didn't, Congo had the option of an alternative route devised by a Canadian mining lawyer who was installed by the World Bank in 2005 to rehabilitate the country's now-bankrupt mining monopoly. That plan envisioned a debt-clearing scheme leading to an eventual IPO on a Western stock exchange; it presumed major steps forward on transparency, as well as a two-year time frame to pull off. The Congo didn't have that kind of time.

By all accounts, Kasongo is a sharp and honest reformer. He alchemized a middle-class Congolese background into an engineering degree in Brussels and a job with Ernst & Young in South Africa before returning to rise in Congo's government. He knows how coveted Congo's minerals have become. "Rio Tinto is knocking on our door," he boasts to me, referring to the world's second-biggest mining giant. "But China sees those big companies -- Tinto, Billiton, all of them formed in colonial times -- and asks, 'Why make Tinto bigger?' "

"If China wants to dominate the world, it's not our business to stop them," Kasongo continues. "Who are we to close the door to them when we don't have water or electricity? If China doesn't come [to Congo], we're in big shit."

If Kasongo ever felt tenderness for China's competitors from the West, it has cooled considerably. On the day I arrived in Kinshasa, I watched a team of exhausted Congolese investigators holed up inside the mining industry until late at night. Stacks of yellowing contracts were piled high on the floor, representing 60 joint ventures the country had signed since 1997, mainly with operators from America, Australia, Britain, Canada, and Israel. With occasional help from Ernst & Young, Rothschild of Paris, and the U.S.-based (Jimmy) Carter Center, Kasongo's deputies were reviewing every detail, a process that has now taken a year. "Every contract is significantly flawed," a British adviser to Kasongo tells me. "Many of the deals were corrupt, and patently so."

Kasongo explains that only 5 of the 60 deals were producing minerals, while 6 projects were still in the feasibility-study stage. "And 49 are sitting there waiting for ... what, I don't know," he fumes. "Expertise? Financing? Investors? A better time to market?" Congo urgently needs those mines to come on line, he says, in order to keep the economy moving, however slowly. But 22 of these "partners" aren't actively mining at all -- they're riding the spike in raw-material prices, "making a fortune with rising share prices" on stock exchanges from Vancouver to New York to London to Johannesburg. "They are mining the stock exchanges, not the mines!" Kasongo exclaims. "We can demonstrate that $17 billion of [stock-market value] is built on a lie to the world. People make their bucks and forget about us. We need water and electricity. The Chinese say, 'We need minerals for growing, and you need infrastructure.' So we have the same interests."