Tenke Fungurume Copper-Cobalt Mine: Chinese Financing for Transition Minerals

Located in the Lualaba Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tenke Fungurume is one of the world’s largest copper and cobalt mines, and the first mine in Africa to be awarded the prestigious “Copper Mark.” In 2016, China Molybdenum (CMOC), backed by Chinese banks, acquired a controlling interest in the mine from American mining company Freeport-McMoRan. In 2017, CMOC arranged a deal with a private Chinese equity firm, enabling it to raise its total ownership stake to 80%.

This mining site profile provides a detailed overview of Chinese state-directed financing, ownership, and operations of the Tenke Fungurume mine. It includes granular information on the mine's funding sources (loans, lenders, and co-financing), acquisition history, ownership structure, implementation milestones, ESG challenges, and risk mitigation measures.

The insights in this profile are derived from AidData’s Chinese Financing for Transition Minerals Dataset, Version 1.0 and the sources referenced therein. This dataset captures $56.9 billion of official sector financial commitments that China provided to 19 low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2021 for projects involving the extraction or processing of copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements. An accompanying report, Power Playbook: Beijing’s Bid to Secure Overseas Transition Minerals, analyzes the dataset and provides evidence about the nature, scale, and scope of the PRC’s overseas financing for the extraction and processing of energy transition minerals.