China signed a new mining deal with the DRC in March 2026, even as the African Development Bank was publicly calling for an end to resource-backed lending across the continent. The two events happened within weeks of each other. The gap between institutional critique and operational reality has rarely been so visible.
Resource-backed loans, or RBLs, tie infrastructure financing to future commodity exports. A Chinese policy bank extends credit to a government, an infrastructure contract goes to a Chinese state-owned enterprise, and repayment flows from an escrow account funded by mineral or oil exports. The model was introduced in Angola in the mid-1990s and has since been used in the DRC, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and others. It accounts for less than 10% of China’s total lending to Africa, but it has attracted disproportionate attention because of what it implies for debt transparency and resource sovereignty.
The AfDB’s position is now explicit. Former president Akinwumi Adesina described RBLs as “asymmetrical” and “non-transparent” and called for African countries to stop using them. The IMF backed that position. The core argument is practical: tying repayment to volatile commodity markets creates a creditor trap. Angola lived through it during the 2014-2016 oil price crash, when falling revenues forced loan renegotiations on terms it did not control. Kenya is currently allocating $1 billion annually from a $33 billion budget to service debt on the Chinese-funded Standard Gauge Railway. The DRC’s original Sicomines deal gave Chinese firms access to mineral deposits valued at roughly $93 billion in exchange for $3 billion in infrastructure investment. These numbers are now widely cited as the clearest evidence of structural imbalance.
The model is also losing ground on a different front. Chinese sovereign lending to Africa surged between 2000 and 2019, reaching $172 billion. Since the pandemic, annual commitments have fallen to around $2.5 billion. The infrastructure financing gap that RBLs once partly filled is now widening again, estimated at between $68 and $108 billion annually against total needs of $130 to $170 billion. That gap is increasingly attracting other actors. The United States signed a minerals deal with the DRC in 2025 under what has been described as Project Vault. Australia, Japan and the UK are expanding their presence in critical mineral sectors. China responded by signing a new deal with Kinshasa in March 2026, but analysts note that Washington’s agreement may be significantly larger in scope.
What this means for the next round of contracts is not a withdrawal of Chinese capital from Africa’s mining sector. Chinese firms already dominate production in Guinea’s bauxite sector, the DRC’s cobalt and copper operations, and the Simandou iron ore project. That embedded position is not easily displaced. What is changing is the negotiating environment. African governments are entering contract discussions with more public scrutiny of RBL terms, more institutional backing for transparency requirements, and more alternative partners willing to offer competing proposals. Guinea’s publication of the Simandou project agreements in December 2025 is one signal. The DRC’s own review of its Chinese mining contracts is another.
The question is not whether resource-backed finance disappears. It is whether the version that emerges from the current period looks different from the one the AfDB spent years criticising. That depends less on Chinese intentions than on how much African governments choose to use the leverage they currently have.