China rolls out the red carpet for African leaders

EXPANDING INFLUENCE

On Monday, President Xi Jinping met with Democratic Republic of the Congo Felix Tshisekedi, state news agency Xinhua said.

China has a significant presence in the DRC, where it is keen on tapping vast natural resources including copper, gold, lithium and rare earth minerals.

But it has grappled with security issues in the country – in July, local sources told AFP that a militia attack on a mining site in gold-rich Ituri province killed at least four Chinese nationals.

Leaders of Djibouti – home to China’s first overseas military base – as well as Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Mali and others, also arrived in Beijing on Sunday and Monday.

Beijing’s loans to African nations last year were their highest in five years, research by the Chinese Loans to Africa Database found. The top borrowers were Angola, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya.

But the data showed that loans were well down compared to highs in 2016 when they totalled almost US$30 billion.

And the loans were increasingly to local banks, researchers said, helping to avoid “exposing Chinese creditors to credit risks associated with those countries”.