Residents of Kamina, capital of the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Haut-Lomami Province, have a new source of clean water this week. Courtesy of a Chinese-built treatment plant that President Félix Tshisekedi personally switched on Wednesday.
Tshisekedi toured the facility’s operational sections, inspected the treatment equipment. Examined a water sample before flipping the switch on the pumping system himself, according to the presidency. He left, officials said, satisfied with what he saw. The plant carries a designed daily supply capacity of more than 7,000 cubic meters. Expected to deliver drinking water meeting local health standards to residents of Kamina and the surrounding area. A region where reliable access to treated water has historically lagged behind the country’s mineral-rich reputation.
DRC Minister of Hydraulic Resources and Electricity Aimé Sakombi Molendo, speaking at the inauguration, said the project would improve living and public health conditions for local residents. While strengthening the country’s broader drinking-water treatment capacity. He added that the government intends to keep developing modern water supply infrastructure to expand access to safe drinking water nationwide. A signal that Kamina is meant as one entry in a longer list rather than an isolated project.
Chinese Ambassador to the DRC Zhao Bin described the plant as a product of practical cooperation between the two countries. And said Beijing remains ready to deepen that cooperation across multiple sectors to deliver further benefits to both peoples.
The financing behind the plant traces directly back to one of the most consequential and contested, economic arrangements between China and the DRC. Sino Congolaise des Mines, known widely as Sicomines. It is a joint venture pairing of DRC state mining company Gécamines with a consortium of Chinese firms led by Sinohydro and China Railway Construction. Sicomines was formed in 2008 as the vehicle for a landmark infrastructure-for-minerals arrangement. Chinese investors would build roads, hospitals and other public infrastructure across the DRC, largely funded from a copper and cobalt mine’s future revenue. In exchange for the bulk of the venture’s equity.
That original deal, once hailed as a “contract of the century,” went through a difficult decade. A 2022 audit by the DRC’s General Inspectorate of Finance found Sicomines had extracted an estimated $10 billion worth of copper and cobalt while completing only around $822 million in infrastructure. A gap that fueled sustained public criticism and ultimately, renegotiation. Following pressure from Tshisekedi’s government, Sinohydro and China Railway Group agreed in early 2024 to raise their infrastructure investment commitment from $3 billion to as much as $7 billion. Alongside broader efforts to increase Gécamines’ equity stake and ensure a larger share of the venture’s workforce was Congolese. Kamina’s water plant arrives as a visible, functioning product of that renegotiated commitment. Precisely the kind of public infrastructure critics had accused the original arrangement of underdelivering.
The Kamina plant lands alongside other recent efforts to recalibrate China’s mining-heavy footprint in the DRC. A March 2026 mining cooperation agreement between the two governments introduced expanded compliance and monitoring mechanisms. Alongside commitments to expand local mineral processing capacity. Part of a broader pattern across the region including; Niger’s 2026 renegotiation of its own CNPC arrangements, of African governments pushing for greater local value capture from Chinese-linked resource deals. The DRC has also periodically pressed Sicomines specifically to process more of its copper and cobalt domestically rather than exporting unrefined concentrate. Arguing that refined exports would both generate more revenue and speed repayment of the underlying infrastructure loans.
China’s broader engagement in the DRC has continued expanding on other fronts this year as well. Beijing has contributed $4.5 million in emergency funding and deployed medical expert teams to support the country’s response to an ongoing Ebola outbreak in Ituri and North Kivu provinces. Work that Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya publicly commended earlier this month.
That resource-driven character continues to draw scrutiny from civil society groups, auditors and some Western analysts. Who argue the balance of benefits in deals like Sicomines has taken years of public pressure to shift even modestly in the DRC’s favor. Chinese officials, for their part, have consistently framed projects like the Kamina water plant as concrete evidence. The relationship delivers tangible public goods alongside commercial extraction. Precisely the argument the renegotiated Sicomines commitments were designed to make credible.
For the residents of Kamina turning on a tap this week, the deeper history behind the pipes running beneath their streets is likely less pressing than the water itself. Clean, treated and flowing, after years in which the underlying deal that financed it became a case study in how infrastructure-for-minerals arrangements can falter. Eventually it gets renegotiated, under sustained domestic pressure.
