On 17 July 2025, a cooperation agreement on mining projects (rather than an MoU) was concluded between the DRC Ministry of Mines and the private society KoBold Metals, including an unusual article 5 stipulating “In order to accelerate free access to geoscientific data, KoBold Metals will deploy a team to the RDC geological archives kept at the Royal Museum of Central Africa to start digitalization of these documents before 31 July 2025”.
The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), a Belgian public federal scientific institution, was not informed at all, even less a party to this agreement. What is behind it? What is the content and importance of these archives? Why the pressure from KoBold? What is the position of the RMCA? In the following article, we try to summarize the main facts.
What are the archives?
Obviously, the RMCA is a product of colonial times, but since the nineties it has progressively undergone profound changes and its current permanent exhibition is even very critical of colonial domination. The RMCA includes a wide array of research departments in natural and human sciences, including a geology department that manages its archives and conducts contemporary geological research in African countries.
Sections of the RMCA archives were deposited by private mining companies that ceased activities in Congo around or after independence, including important funds from Forminière, Géomines and the Compagnie Minière des Grands Lacs, and from organizations such as the Comité Spécial du Katanga. The archives also include research and exploration data from individual geologists and from multidisciplinary exploration campaigns in the DRC, as well as geological data obtained through research undertaken by RMCA geologists. A large volume of relevant archives is held by the Belgian State Archives, including the archive collection from the “Union Minière du Haut Katanga.” The total volume for both is estimated to be up to 7 million pages.
The colonial and mining company archives, about four fifths of the total volume, ended up in the RMCA mainly through close personal contacts between geologists in the colony and those working in Tervuren. In most cases the transfer is not even documented.
The archives ‘considerable scientific importance became overshadowed by its potential economic value as some files contain detailed mineral exploration reports and other information about mineral deposit occurrences, which provide important indicators for mining companies to undertake further exploration of the DRC subsoil.
Access to the archives was always free for academic research. Access for companies, subject to a fee, was discontinued in 2021 awaiting an agreement with the DRC government about its future modalities.
What is KoBold Metals?
The company was created in 2018, led by scientists, and funded by several types of investing companies, including T. Rowe Price (Investment management), Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos), Andreessen Horowitz (venture capital group). It has no identifiable beneficial owner and is not quoted on the stock exchange.
The company wants to update and renew mining exploration techniques by intensive use of AI. It is active in Zambia where they develop the Mingomba copper mine project, aiming to become the largest copper producer in Zambia with an output expected to be over 300 000 tons per year. In the DRC, KoBold tries to develop a section of a huge lithium deposit in Manono, North Katanga, but it is still entangled in a legal dispute with the Australian company AVZ mining. This does not deter the company from announcing a huge exploration campaign in its Manono concessions.
KoBold Metals obviously wants to benefit from the Trump administration’s CRM policy and its strategic partnership agreement with the DR Congo. It could be awarded preferential treatment provided by the agreement to US based companies.
As a company focused on high-tech exploration, it is naturally very much interested in the Tervuren archives which also include an important collection of documents concerning Manono. Their request to scan the entire archive collection to explore the digital files with AI to find potential mineral indicators, in principle throughout the DRC, was hitherto refused. KoBold is thought to have launched a large media campaign to put pressure on the RMCA and the Belgian government to release its archives to KoBold for digitalization, underlining their roots in colonial times and suggesting the Museum refuses transparency which would benefit the DRC government.
But is this really true?
The legal, scientific, and ethical problems
As a federal scientific institution, the RMCA is ruled by the European Union legislation on transparency of scientific data[1], and by the legal principle (by case law) that Belgian federal collections are inalienable and can therefore not be sold to private actors. The Belgian ministries for Foreign Affairs and of Scientific Research are clear about this as well as about its inherently public nature.
The exploration and commercial approach from KoBold Metals is also incompatible with the scientific and public service framework of the RMCA There are obviously no guarantees, even if written on paper, that a private company will restore data of potential economic interest to a public institution or to the public in general. Private or first access to these data obtained with a technologically advanced AI program would thus provide KoBold with an important competitive advantage towards other companies and could interfere with the mining sector governance by the DRC authorities.
KoBold reportedly contributed to the digitalization of Zambian mining archives in two years resulting in the creation of a public website. It is unclear however whether data with potential economic value for KoBold are included.
From an ethical point of view, it is hardly legitimate to transfer publicly available data to a private company. One could obviously also argue that it is not legitimate either to keep DRC geological data in a Belgian scientific institution: the RMCA nevertheless has undertaken several initiatives to increasingly grant access to its data.
Tervuren Transparency
The English press most often describes the RMCA as eternally burdened with the original colonial sin, overlooking the transformation of the Museum over time. As an example, the RMCA has digitized its collection of more than 31 000 geological, topographical, administrative, and thematic maps which can be accessed through an online catalogue. (https://geocatalogue.africamuseum.be/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/searchtext).
From 2003-2012 a project funded by Belgian Development Cooperation was implemented, initially entitled “Constitution in the DRC and Belgium of a geological and mining database network on the DRC”. It involved a partnership between RMCA and five DRC institutions (Center for Geological and Mining Research CRGM, University of Lubumbashi, the Mining Technical Coordination and Planning Cell CTCPM, the Bakwanga Mining Company MIBA, the Gécamines and at a later stage the DRC Mining Registry). This resulted in the creation of a database with metadata about the archives of all partners (minus MIBA and Gécamines) accessible online on https://drcmining.africamuseum.be/en. It includes references (not the document itself) to archive documents, geological and mineralogical maps, aerial photographs, inventoried mining sites etc. By submitting geolocation data, one can localize a geographical area and find references to the available information about the area in the interlinked databases of the institutions where the data are stored.
The project was not entirely completed because the World Bank – funded Promines project took over the development of a national database which was unfortunately not completed either. The Promines database project was reportedly finalized for artisanal mining, and topographic base maps were elaborated for selected areas (Katanga and Equateur) only, allowing the identification of priority targets for exploration.
The current digitalization project
When KoBold Metals put pressure on the RMCA, the latter was already engaged in discussions with DRC authorities about sharing of geoscientific information, and funding subsequently became available through participation in the EU-funded PanAfGeo project (Pan-African Support to geological sciences and technology), coordinated by the BGRM (French geological survey).
During the first three years, all available archival data for specific parts of three selected areas will be digitalized and provided as input for research and exploration on the ground. The areas, as proposed by the DRC authorities,, are sections of the Manono area (for lithium, tin, tantalum), the Dibaya and Luiza areas (Kasai Central) (for nickel, chrome, diamonds) and several areas in Kongo Central (for graphite, copper-lead-zinc, aluminum).
Supplementary funding is foreseen for the next phase when archives concerning all other parts of the DRC will be digitalized and made available. An agreement will be concluded with the DRC government about the accessibility of the data.
Conclusion
During the Mobutu regime and the 1996-1997 and 1998-2002 wars, scientific cooperation between the RMCA and the DRC was almost impossible. Since its resumption in 2003, data sharing of maps and historical and more recent geological information has been steadily increasing, contrary to the widespread myth about Tervuren as a neo-colonial institution which wants to monopolize data essential for the economic advancement of the DRC, this is part of a profound reform process of the Museum over the last decades. Provided adequate funding, the currently ongoing digitalization project must end up in total transparency and data sharing, enabling the DRC government to negotiate from an equitable position with foreign investors and mining companies. This process obviously offers more solid guarantees for scientific integrity, transparency, and publicly monitored cooperation with the DRC government than similar initiatives with a private company.
[1] There is not one legal act but various EU rules and regulations including the Open Data directive (Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council, adopted on 20 June 2019), the Data Governance act (Regulation (EU) 2022/868) and the overarching EU Open Science Policy.
