Johannesburg — Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi faces an uphill battle in his promise to overhaul what he says is an unfair minerals-for-infrastructure deal with China before the resource-rich but conflict-plagued country’s December elections, analysts said after the African leader’s visit to Beijing the past week.
While Tshisekedi’s spokesman told reporters that negotiations over the restructuring of the deal went “wonderfully” when Tshisekedi met with counterpart Xi Jinping, and a revised agreement should be complete by the end of the year, nothing concrete was actually mentioned in a post-meeting press release.
Tshisekedi has long said the multibillion-dollar deal made by his predecessor — which gave China 68% of a major mining stake in exchange for Chinese partners promising to build roads, hospitals and schools — unfairly benefits China more than the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The DRC government earlier this year released a report saying the country had not received nearly as much…
