Belgian museum caught in row over millions of DR Congo records

Millions of records spanning Belgium’s brutal rule in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo are at the centre of a dispute over who should control data about Africa’s largest copper producer.

The documents, housed at a Brussels museum built to celebrate Belgium’s empire, are being sought by DR Congo and KoBold Metals, a Bill Gates-backed mining and artificial intelligence company that struck a deal last year with Kinshasa to digitise them.

KoBold says it has yet to gain access to the papers, which include geological records. But the museum plans to carry out the digitisation itself, and Belgian officials say they cannot grant exclusive access to an overseas private entity, despite its agreement with the Congolese government.

A Belgian government spokesperson said exchanges between the two countries were “sustained and ongoing”. The records were “federal public archives” and Belgium “cannot grant privileged or exclusive access to a foreign private company with which it has no contractual relationship”.

The case highlights unresolved tensions over colonial accountability in Belgium’s relationship with the DR Congo, whose vast natural resources have become a focus of western efforts to reduce dependence on China for critical minerals.

It also raises questions about the wisdom of the Congolese government in entrusting potentially valuable sovereign information to a single company — though KoBold says it will make the documents freely available.

Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa underwent a dramatic overhaul in 2013 designed to rehabilitate its reputation and break from its controversial colonial legacy.

Louis Watum Kabamba, DR Congo’s minister of mines, told the FT that the Belgians had been “a bit protective” over the records, but that he had instructed officials to engage with Belgian authorities to accelerate the process.

“It’s all going through our Geological Service, but they gave me very positive feedback so there’s no need for me to push any further,” he said. 

Belgium said its aim was that the DR Congo and its population should benefit from the archives, with an alternative EU-funded effort to digitise the documents “under way”.

Digitised copies of records would be sent to DR Congo authorities on an ongoing basis, at which point “their use falls fully under the sovereignty” of DR Congo. “Belgium does not intervene in the subsequent choices that may be made on the basis of these data,” the spokesperson said.

At present, “researchers and the general public can have access” to the documents on site at the museum, they added.

The millions of documents are a trove of information about the geology of a country rich in copper, cobalt and lithium — metals that are essential to industrial supply chains. DR Congo is among the world’s largest copper producers and has at least half the globe’s reserves of cobalt, needed for mobile phones and batteries, according to the US Geological Survey.

It is one of the African nations drawing investor attention as western nations race to secure critical raw materials. A US-DR Congo minerals partnership was struck last year, at the same time as a Washington-brokered peace deal between DR Congo and neighbouring Rwanda.

Conditions in many mines remain dire, however. At least 200 people died in a recent tunnel collapse in the Rubaya coltan mine in a region of eastern Congo controlled by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

DR Congo’s resources were exploited by King Leopold II, the Belgian King who ruled the country as a personal possession from 1885. He authorised the use of forced labour to extract rubber, ivory and later copper and cobalt. Rubber supplies were maintained by severing the limbs of labourers who failed to meet their quotas.

Leopold II’s “civilising mission” in DR Congo was initially celebrated in the museum in Tervuren, which dates back to 1897. Its early exhibitions included a “human zoo”, a replica of a Congolese village where real Congolese people lived and died. It also displayed statues of Black Congolese depicted as brute barbarians and white colonisers as saviours.

Even after the revamp, the museum has been accused by academics and historians of showcasing stolen artefacts and whitewashing Belgium’s colonial past. Its website now notes that “Leopold II saw the museum as a propaganda tool for his colonial project”.

Bart Ouvry, managing director of the museum, told the FT that the institution had been planning to digitise and make public the geological records when KoBold approached it, adding: “We don’t have any interest in farming [the work] out.”

“It’s important not to let this be done purely from a mining perspective . . . Our position right from the start was very clear that we had a better alternative — not just for our institution but also for the Congolese side,” he said. That included not just digitising the records but collaborating with Congolese authorities on research over the long term.

The museum’s geological archive consists of about 500 metres of files relating mostly to the DR Congo as well as former Belgian colonies Rwanda and Burundi. Belgium’s state archives hold additional colonial-era records.

Much of what the museum holds is documents from private companies and individuals, which it said it planned to make available “as open source material”.

The files have drawn attention as more companies such as KoBold use AI to help discover minerals. Ageing mines are becoming less productive and the easiest-to-exploit deposits have already been tapped. 

Among Berkeley-based KoBold’s investors are Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, whose backers include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

KoBold’s rival EarthAI has sourced huge volumes of data from Australian state and federal archives to feed its algorithms.

In July, KoBold signed an agreement with the DR Congo government to “co-operate to provide free public access to historic geoscientific data”, as part of which the company would “deploy a team to the DR Congo geological records at the Royal Museum of Central Africa to begin digitising records before July 31, 2025”.

KoBold said it would use the information to enrich its database and the records would be made publicly available. The group has also secured eight licences to explore for lithium in the country.

KoBold helped digitise Zambia’s geological records, which are accessible for a fee.

Benjamin Katabuka, KoBold’s director-general for the DR Congo, told the FT in January that “we have not, since the agreement was signed, made great progress”. He said that the company was “having a hard time getting access”.

Ouvry said the museum was “not a party to the agreement between KoBold and the DR Congo government”. While private companies could request access to specific records, KoBold wanted access to the entire archive, and “I cannot delegate the management of complete archives to a private company,” he said.

Cartography by Steven Bernard in London