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

Kasongo despises the old-style patronage deals in Congo, but he's also a realist; and everyone knows there are protectors inside the government. "His political position is delicate," says one insider. "Half the mining world wants him dead. There is a limit to how far Victor can talk about corruption on his side. But he can change the deals."

After I returned to the United States, Congo announced that it had accepted China's $6 billion offer (later upped to $9 billion), creating not only an enormous new source of cash and support inside the country but also a serious challenge to the Western companies that had operated there with little or no competition. Since February, Kasongo has been trying to renegotiate the most egregious of the old contracts in the ministry's portfolio. He's besieged by the old guard on one side, which still has plenty at stake in the existing deals, and the World Bank on the other, which is expressing concern that the China deal is corruption-prone and may saddle Congo with still more unsustainable debt on top of the $14 billion already owed to the West. As Kasongo explains, "We asked the World Bank for roads," but it wanted to attach too many conditions. "Obviously, we want human rights," he goes on, "and we have a mechanism in place, thanks to the Europeans. But Asians listen more to our concerns without being patronizing."

The Chinese, in other words, are long on cash and short on rules. One can't help wondering if Westerners ever really had a chance to compete in Congo. After all, what Western nation (or company) could take on such gargantuan risk -- especially in a country the World Bank ranks as the very worst place in the world to do business? As China's ambassador to Congo, Wu Zexian, has said, China won the contract because its no- strings offer was all upside for the Congolese government: "Unbeatable, one could say. Unbeatable by far. There won't be any competitors."

The 37-year-old Kabila, the first democratically elected leader since Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960, has staked his future -- political and possibly physical -- on the Chinese deal panning out. China's next trick will be to find a way to rip the treasure from the ground and move it out of a country the size of Western Europe but with scarcely 1,200 miles of decent roads, a decaying or nonexistent infrastructure, and an annual government budget of only $3.6 billion. But just as China has a coherent strategy for locking up raw materials, it now seems to be revealing a master plan for taking those materials back home. Of the $9 billion, one-third will be pumped into the Congo's war-ravaged mines. The other $6 billion will take the form of a soft loan (backed by some of the country's best mineral deposits) for new infrastructure, to be built by Chinese construction companies, primarily with Chinese labor. Indeed, when you study the outlines of the Sino-Congolese deal -- it features roughly 4,500 miles of rail lines and roads -- China's decision to launch its first "special economic zone," including a giant smelter, in adjacent Zambia makes perfect sense. The zone will serve as the hub of an industrial-distribution system linking Congo by rail and highway to Chinese-built networks in Zambia and Angola, and ultimately to ports on either coast.

China seems to be developing an extraction master plan for the sub-Sahara, linking Congo to Zambia and Angola.

Some critics fear the deal amounts to Congo's de facto colonization. But the package includes a mind-spinning 176 hospitals and health centers, a modernized sewer system for Kinshasa, two large universities, a new port, and 5,000 units of public housing. That kind of colonization might be worth thinking about. "What keeps me awake?" Kasongo asks. "If we fail to deliver water and electricity because we mismanaged our strong points [i.e., minerals]. Every day counts. We don't have means to deliver anything, but we can exchange what we have. If the Chinese are the solution, why not?"

In reality, China is part of the problem. Congo's official statistics show that its No. 1 export partner today is Belgium, followed by the United States. In truth, it's probably China -- thanks to that still-thriving informal economy begun under Mobutu. Kasongo estimates there are 1.5 million artisanal "diggers" in Congo -- black-market miners, many of them indentured to Chinese middlemen and financiers. These diggers currently produce about 75% of the minerals exported from Congo, he says, mostly by clawing for nuggets with pickaxes or their bare hands. The concentrate is typically loaded onto 30-ton flatbed trucks and smuggled to China on cargo ships via South African or Tanzanian ports. "Most of the Chinese are here illegally," adds Gaby Matshafu, one of Kasongo's deputies.