china is growing ever more powerful in drc

October 14, 2008

China Is Growing Ever More Powerful In The Democratic Republic of Congo


Mark Nunn



China is now as embedded in the sociopolitical strata of the DRC as the diamonds are in its soil. It’s a strange relationship, compared to those that have gone before, a new paradigm, and – depending who you talk to here – exploitative and viciously balanced in favour of the Chinese, or a welcome new approach to assuring the forward progress this country so desperately needs. The government, as might be expected, are unequivocal, their press releases and speeches this year enthusiastic and florid (my translations from the French are unofficial): “a historic agreement”, “the foundation on which the growth of our economy is going to be built”, or – my favourite if only for all the buttons it will be guaranteed to push – “a vast Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of our country’s basic infrastructure.”
The agreement is a hugely ambitious venture joining Gécamines, the DRC state mining company, and the Chinese government, in the form of a new company. Sixty-eight per cent of the shares in this company will be owned by the Chinese; 32 per cent by Gécamines. There will be three phases for the repayment of investments: all profits of Phase 1 go to repaying in full China’s mining investments, including interest: 30 per cent of funding is an interest-free shareholder loan, the other 70 per cent with a rate of 6.1 per cent. Phase 2 allocates 66 per cent of profits for repaying investments for the first infrastructure instalment and interest, and the other 34 per cent to paying shareholders. Phase 3 allocates all profits to shareholders. The second instalment of infrastructure work and payment of interest rate will be financed by the tax and customs generated in the ordinary fashion for the DRC government.

So what real difference does this make to life in the capital? My first evening at my hotel in Kinshasa, I was working at a table by the pool when a portly Congolese man at the next table answered his mobile phone. In retrospect it was naïve of me to be surprised, but it was a real Buñuel moment when he answered his Nokia in Chinese. Three weeks later the experience was mirrored neatly by the owner of a Chinese restaurant in a leafy suburb, who took issue with his waiting staff and berated them loudly and solidly for several minutes in Lingala, the most widely spoken (in Kinshasa at least) of DRC’s 400+ native languages.

On reflection, cultural cross-contamination of any form shouldn’t be surprising – the presence of the UN battalions, mining concerns, NGOs and the “businessmen” invariably drawn to countries like this means that Indians, Ghanaians, Ukrainians and Russians are as likely to be at the next table in an upmarket restaurant as Congolese. More so, perhaps, in a country where 80 per cent of the indigenous population makes under 20 cents a day and a Shawarma sandwich comes in at about 5 dollars. Kinshasa effectively has dual currency as well, US dollars in parallel with Congolese francs – streetside as well as in upmarket hotels (one quirk of the system is that anyone in any business will refuse a dollar bill with the slightest tear or disfigurement, while they’ll comfortably exchange franc notes held together with sellotape).

The Chinese, though, are integrated differently, as much part of the picture in Kinshasa as the Lebanese and the Indians, many of whom are at least second- or third-generation, who run so many of the town’s smaller businesses. The best value meal in town is Chinese. The national stadium, alone and imposing in a giant car park surrounded by empty land is a Chinese construction. Chinese surveyors in enormous floppy fieldhand’s straw hats line the main drag into town, peering into their sights and adjusting their tripods. The golf course adjacent to the cemetery (a logical arrangement in the West, perhaps, but not here, where retirement is reached by only the tiniest minority and golf remains an adjunct to deal-making) is populated by serious-looking Chinese men talking earnestly with their Congolese counterparts (while playing golf quite badly).

So how does the deal work? Well, the Chinese government gets the goods, and in return, according to DRC authorities, the deal has “an internal profitability rate of at least 19 per cent on a total initial value of US$9.25 billion, of which US$3.25 billion takes the form of mining investment and the remaining $6 billion is allocated to infrastructure development.” The shopping list, taken directly from a government press release, is impressive:

• 3,215 kilometres of railways
• 3,300 kilometres of asphalted roads
• 2,738 kilometres of beaten earth roads
• 550 kilometres of urban roadways
• A 450-bed hospital in Kinshasa, 31 smaller hospitals and 145 health centres
• Two hydro-electric dams and two electricity distribution networks
• Two vocational training centres
• And two airports.

DRC Infrastructure Minister Pierre Lumbi claims the deal will generate “tens of thousands of jobs,” with 10,000 people directly employed in the first phase alone, and leaves no doubt as to where he stands: “this contract is undoubtedly the best which the country has ever signed with foreign investors.” He could be right: this could be part of a new dawn, long awaited and long deserved – Africa is not short of people willing to put in the work and hustle, and in a country as blessed with resources as the DRC, opening up a functional infrastructure could have long-term positive effects for the population that dwarf the bare numbers in the deal.

“Could” is still the operative word, though – at street level, people seem very uncertain about the arrangement. One issue that comes up repeatedly is the nature of the jobs: the Chinese construction companies, I was told again and again, bring in their own labour. They work efficiently and productively, but they don’t employ local staff. A little voice says that in a country with such a peerless history of “disappearing” any external cash investment via the private accounts of the elite, keeping the process out of the hands of local authorities might be a way of guaranteeing the benefits trickle down. Who knows?

One thing, though, is unavoidably obvious: infrastructure is sorely needed. A country half the size of Europe, domestic travel of any distance necessitates air travel because of the lack of roads and railways, but every single domestic passenger airline is on some air safety blacklist or another. My Congolese colleagues refer to domestic airlines as “Air peut etre” – “Air maybe”, and can’t understand how someone could fail to call home after a flight and tell their family they’re still alive. DRC presents an immensely complicated equation, but it’s hard to escape the notion that Chinese-style seriousness about sorting things out might be just what’s needed.

In 2002, a volcano sent lava across the runway of the airport in Goma, a town in the mineral-rich east of the country that’s a frontier centre for armed factions, refugees, UN troops and NGO workers involved in the ongoing conflict that has simmered in the hills and forests for years. Six years later, the runway’s still a little short, truncated prematurely by a wave of black slag. Just last year, an Antonov-12 cargo plane landed long, failed to come to a stop before striking the lava, caught fire on impact, and killed eight passengers. They wouldn’t stand for it in Harbin; they shouldn’t have to here.