I recently visited Kinhasa to help review advocacy policies and propose new ones to be followed in Africa by Jesuit institutions. It was three years since I was last in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
These few years of peace seemed to have increased levels of confidence among the population. Development too is taking place. There was clearly greater hope and an awareness that something new is happening.
On my way to visit the offices of Centre d'Etudes pour l'Action Social (CEPAS), a social centre engaged in advocacy issues and peace efforts, I began to understand one of the reasons. I saw at the other side of the compound two huge and well-designed buildings under construction.
'I did not know that your new extension was going to be so grand,' I said jokingly to Father Ferdinand Muhigirwa. He replied: 'I wish they were our buildings. One of the buildings is the new Chinese business and commercial centre, and the other one that looks like a palace is the house of its future Chinese Director.'
Listening to Fr Ferdinand talk about the work CEPAS is doing with the large foreign mining companies was like a class in international geopolitics.
In collaboration with the advocacy officer from the US Jesuit Conference, John Kleiderer, and the new representative of OCIPE-Brussels, Emmanuelle Devuyst, they are dealing with a US mining company whose copper concession extends over 18,000 square kilometres. The concession holds the largest copper reserves in the world.
Operations have not started yet, but the site already has a private international airport, a new highway connecting it to Lubumbashi, new excavating machines as high as a ten-storey building, a private security army of 800 people, and a fully equipped hospital. The infrastructure is massive.
The Congolese government is now renegotiating the contracts of all mining companies. Companies will be classified by a very strict set of criteria covering environmental, labour, tax protocols, social and other issues. Those grouped in Class A will have met all the criteria laid out by the government. They will have their contracts renegotiated.
Companies that do not fulfill all the criteria are placed in Class B. They must commit themselves within a specified time to fulfil all the conditions for reclassification into Class A. Otherwise they will be asked to leave. Companies placed in category C have to leave the country.
The US copper company I mentioned earlier has been