Democratic Republic of Congo is still looking for partners for the world’s biggest hydropower project and expects expanded mining investments from the United Arab Emirates as the central African nation prepares for December elections.
The Congolese leader is looking to position the resource-rich country as a destination for investors seeking climate-change solutions. Besides hydropower, he’s pitching carbon credits to protect the world’s second-largest tropical forest and investment in critical green-energy minerals including copper and cobalt. Congo is the world’s biggest producer of cobalt.
The plans signal an openness to new investors beyond the Chinese and European companies that control most of Congo’s mining and telecoms industries. The UAE could soon offer development programs in education and already provided equipment and training to the nation’s soldiers that helped repel a recent offensive by the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo, he said.
Congo’s government is also renegotiating a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China that Tshisekedi said would result in “a new adventure” between the two countries. China’s domination of Congo’s copper and cobalt mines has become a concern for Western governments worried about access to key minerals for batteries.