China invests in Gabon iron

Chinese arrival

After years of stagnation and neglect, people in and around the isolated Gabonese village of Belinga, surrounded by virgin forest, are hopeful that that the arrival of the Chinese will improve their lives.

Although the consortium chosen to develop the mine is only just starting its work on the ground, locals are expecting a windfall in jobs and other economic benefits.

“All of the people’s hopes are riding on the exploitation of the Belinga iron ore deposit … the people are waiting for the work to get going,” said Andre Nkoghe Ella, mayor of Makokou, the regional capital, around 110 km from Belinga.

Basic infrastructure

At the moment, the journey from Makokou to Belinga is either a muddy drive through hills on a dirt road or a more leisurely motor canoe trip up the Ivindo river.

Local inhabitants, including pygmies living in neighbouring forests, eke out a meagre living by hunting, fishing or cultivating crops.

“There’s everything to be done in this almost forgotten area – roads, electricity and even running water,” Firmin Tcheka, a boatman, says.

It was the Chinese group’s promises to tackle all of the basic infrastructure required to make the project work that won them the Belinga contract in the face of tough competition.

Brazilian mining giant Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) and French nickel firm Eramet had originally been part of the consortium eyeing Belinga.

But they pulled out because they were unwilling to bear the cost of building the accompanying infrastructure in such a remote, undeveloped location more than 500 km east of Gabon‘s capital, Libreville.

No strings attached

Many African governments like the no-strings-attached approach of the Chinese, who offer aid or loans not linked to demands for good governance, transparency or improvements in human rights – the recipe for Western aid development packages.

“When the Chinese come they can provide financing, without a lot of strings or moralising,” said a government adviser when he accompanied Omar Bongo, the Gabonese president, on a visit to Beijing in November.

“They say, ‘the Europeans will come with a lot of conditions, but we won’t interfere’. That’s very attractive to governments here,” the adviser added.

Jobs for all

Underpinning the Belinga project are more than three decades of cordial ties between Bongo, Africa’s longest serving ruler, and China.

The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1974 and Bongo has visited China at least 10 times. Chinese companies have constructed roads and public buildings in Gabon and are also mining manganese and exploring for oil and gas.

Bongo hails the Belinga iron ore venture as “the project of the century” and has made clear he expects it to create thousands of jobs for his people.

Sensitive to suggestions that China might import its own technicians and skilled labourers to carry out the project, China‘s ambassador to Gabon, Xue Jinwei, says there should be more than enough jobs to go around – perhaps 20,000 or more.

“We’re talking about a big project that includes the construction of a port, a railway, dams and the exploitation of the mine itself. That’s a big job that is going to need a lot of people,” the ambassador said.

In anticipation of finding work, miners who once worked at a now closed uranium mine at Mounana in the southeast of the country have travelled north to Belinga.

Once in operation, the Belinga mine will sell all its iron ore to Chinese steel mills.

China‘s hunger for iron ore has grown as its industry churns out steel for the ships that carry its exports, for the cars that crowd its roads, and the skyscrapers that crown its teeming cities.

But in the hamlets and villages around Belinga, the expectations are more modest.

“I hope that the Chinese can build a nice school, a library with lots of books,” said Nicolas Essone, aged eight, one of several barefoot children studying at Belinga’s mud-hut school.