China’s cobalt mines in spotlight as DRC seeks to renegotiate deals
- ‘It is time for the country to readjust its contracts with miners to seal win-win partnerships,’ President Felix Tshisekedi tells Congolese people
- Beijing ready to strengthen ‘strategic partnership based on win-win cooperation’, China’s ambassador to DRC says
The Central African nation is the world’s biggest producer of cobalt, which is an essential component in the batteries used to power electric vehicles and appliances like smartphones, tablets and laptops.
However, President Felix Tshisekedi believes his predecessors in Kinshasa signed lopsided contracts with mining companies that denied the Congolese people – many of whom live in poverty – their fair share of benefits from the sale of their nation’s minerals, and he wants to renegotiate them.
On a visit last week to the mining town of Kolwezi in Katanga province, where about 40 companies – 30 of them Chinese owned – have mining operations, Tshisekedi told the public it was time to redress the balance.
“I have really had enough. I am very severe with these investors who come to enrich themselves. They come with empty pockets and leave billionaires,” he said.
