Kinshasa reviews mining deal with Chinese firms to seal loopholes

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Men work in a gold mine in Chudja, near Bunia, north eastern Congo on February 23, 2009. PHOTO | AFP

The Congolese government says it has rectified a controversial mining deal it had signed with China, potentially upending what had looked like a source of bad relations between Kinshasa to Beijing.

The new deal, officials said this week, is a result of open negotiations with Beijing. It came 16 years after the two sides signed what the Congolese authorities had called “the contract of the century.”