Belgian museum, US mining company at odds over colonial-era Congo archive
By Clement Bonnerot
Published on March 4, 2026.
US mining company, KoBold Metals, is in a dispute with Belgium's AfricaMuseum over who should digitise antique maps of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the museum's archive. Mining startup KoBOLD Metals has offered to support the DRC in digitising the colonial-era archive, which contains millions of documents detailing how Congo's mineral wealth was explored and exploited. However, the Belgian museum, backed by Belgian authorities, has refused, citing a separate project with DRC to digitise the data. The museum's extensive archive includes material that is handwritten, fragile and still not fully inventoried.
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