When the new president of the Democratic Republic of Congo visited Washington in April, the mining billionaire Robert Friedland was waiting in a room at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel to greet him. Also there were the US ambassador to the DRC and Sun Yufeng, the head of China’s state-owned Citic Metals, the largest investor in Mr Friedland’s company Ivanhoe Mines. 

Mr Sun and  Mr Friedland wanted support for a new copper venture in the DRC that is set to solidify China’s influence over the resource-rich country — something that would not have skipped the attention of US officials taking part in tense trade talks with their Chinese counterparts across the city on the same day. Mr Sun told President Felix Tshisekedi about Citic’s ability to build large infrastructure projects, including roads, railways, ports and bridges, in the country — something few western mining companies could match. Since then Citic has agreed to invest an additional C$612m in the Toronto-based Ivanhoe.

The importance of the meeting for Mr Friedland was clear. Having helped discover two of the world’s largest mines, now, off a dusty unpaved road in the DRC, he believes he may have found a third: Kamoa-Kakula, a huge untapped copper deposit worth at least $10bn.