Congo leader visits China with minerals deal on agenda
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00:00 Deok Hongo is planning to boost its stake in a cobalt and copper joint venture with Chinese
00:05 firms. Kinshasa currently gets a little over 30% of the deal but wants that more than doubled.
00:12 Rejigging the lopsided pact will be at the top of the agenda when President Felix Tshisekedi
00:17 heads to China for a five-day visit later this week. Our correspondent in Beijing, Yena Li,
00:22 brings us more.
00:25 On his first state visit to China, President Felix Tshisekedi is expected to push for new
00:31 terms on an infrastructure for minerals deal. The deal was signed back in 2008,
00:37 long before he entered office. It's worth more than 6 billion US dollars. The idea behind it
00:44 was to bring more roads and more hospitals to the country in exchange for access for Chinese firms
00:50 to Congolese cobalt and copper. At the time, it was dubbed the "deal of the century" but for the
00:57 current president, this deal was "poorly negotiated." In fact, a state auditor published a
01:05 report just back in February and in it, it said that the Chinese side should cough up an extra
01:10 17 billion dollars for that deal to be considered fair for both sides. Fast forward a few months
01:17 to now, to this week, President Tshisekedi is expected to sit down with his Chinese counterpart,
01:22 President Xi Jinping, on Friday. The two are to sign several bilateral deals, including something
01:28 on the minerals deal. Details have yet to be released on what each side has managed to negotiate
01:36 so far. But of course, this visit isn't just about rare metals in the Democratic Republic
01:41 of the Congo. The two sides are also talking about defense and technology. For example,
01:46 we know that the Congolese side, Kinshasa, has been buying more and more Chinese drones,
01:51 more and more Chinese fighter jets. And President Tshisekedi is also scheduled to visit the economic
01:57 capital of Shanghai and the tech capital of Shenzhen later on this week.