The Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s top cobalt supplier, is courting new mining investors from Saudi Arabia to help it diversify and curb overreliance on companies from China, Marcellin Paluku, a senior government official, told Reuters.
Congo, which is also rich in copper and other critical minerals, wants more partnerships with the new investors to limit the risk of relying solely on Chinese investors, Paluku, who is a deputy cabinet director in the ministry of mines, said.
Chinese companies, some of which are state-backed, have over the past years emerged as the biggest investors in Congo, ramping up investment and production for copper and cobalt.
CMOC Group is now the world’s biggest cobalt miner as it boosts output at Tenke Fungurume mine it bought from US-based Freeport-McMoRan in 2016.
Paluku said Chinese investors’ dominant role in the sector now presents a “risk” to the country’s economy.
“Today, 80% of our mines, it’s with one partner (China). So it’s a risk,” Paluku told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a mining conference in Riyadh.
“You never know what can happen…So that means we are now trying to diversify our partnerships so we don’t rely on only one partner.”
Congo is also courting investors from the European Union and India, Paluku said. The country is seeking to move away from current joint ventures which are heavily skewed in favour of investors, he added. “We are talking to all the people who are open to do business with us,” Paluku said.
(By Pesha Magid and Felix Njini; Editing by Ros Russell)
