BBC: China in DR Congo aid deal

It's a scene that - with just a few changes - you might have found in the central African bush in the late 19th Century.


Alongside, a deferential African bearing a long pole. The two are barely able to communicate with one another.

You're reminded, irresistibly, of images of Victorian era explorers such as David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley, hacking their way across the continent.

But this foreigner comes from a country that suffered from colonial exploitation itself.

Biggest deal

He's Chinese, an engineer, and his assistant's pole is not for beating down the vegetation. It's a global positioning tool, taking satellite readings to plot the exact course of a road that's about to be built.

The pair belong to an advance team of surveyors deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo by a massive state-owned firm based in Beijing, the China Railway Engineering Corporation, or CREC.


DR Congo Timeline

And the new road they're planning will be the first fruit of the biggest single deal China's ever done in Africa, worth $9bn.

Due to be signed in Beijing in the next few days, it gives DR Congo $6bn of desperately needed infrastructure - about 2,400 miles of road, 2,000 miles of railway, 32 hospitals, 145 health centres and two universities.

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China in DR Congo aid deal


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source: BBC