L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

DRC to extract copper and cobalt in return for the construction of
roads, hospitals, schools and the rehabilitation of two major mineral
deposits. 54
As in the Soviet-Guinean case the financing scheme envisages
the repayment of a loan through the exporting of natural resources.
In modern cases, China allocates loans for infrastructure projects
and is granted the exploitation of mineral resources in return. The
EXIM Bank uses the scheme when confronted with countries that
cannot provide adequate collateral to their loan commitments. Instead,
a framework agreement is signed. The EXIM Bank provides
finances to a Chinese construction company that works for the beneficiary
government. In exchange, the government renders some oil
or mineral concessions to Chinese extractive companies that service
the debts to the EXIM Bank.
The identity of the Soviet and Chinese financing schemes becomes
obvious from the visual presentation of the so called Angolan
model in one of the World Bank publications (see Fig. 2.3.1).
The assistance to Guinea in exploring its mineral resources since
1960 has been broad and varied. Geological surveys have been made
over a territory of 30,000 square kilometers. As a result, deposits of
limestone and various building materials have been discovered. One
of them, near the border with Mali, could supply raw materials to a
plant producing up to 200,000 tons of cement a year. Soviet geologists
took part in surveying new bauxite-bearing regions in Guinea.
Promising deposits have been discovered. Technological and economic
recommendations were compiled for the construction, on a
compensatory basis, of a second national enterprise on the mining
and processing of bauxites in the district of Goual, with a capacity of
four to six million tons of bauxites a year.
Private companies that replaced USSR state owned entities took
over the former Soviet inheritance. One of them, Moscow-based
“RUSAL” corporation is the largest foreign employer in Guinea
with 2,300 people working at various locations. It relies on the African
nation for 40 percent of its bauxite needs. The aluminum producer
has said it plans to invest $5.5 billion in a new mine there,
Dian Dian.
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