According to the British newspaper The Financial Times, the Congolese government last year signed a deal with the American company Kobold Metals to digitize old archive materials on the Congolese subcontinent.
The mining company, which is partly owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and tech billionaire Bill Gates, wants to analyze this data using AI to identify new, suitable mining locations. Congo’s soil is rich in important raw materials such as cobalt, copper and coltan.
The collection in question is located at the Africa Museum in Tervuren, which refuses to transfer the materials to the company. Museum director Bart Overy said, ‘We want to do the digitization in a scientific manner ourselves, and not leave it to a private company.’
‘These are public archives, not company archives that can be easily handed over. ‘This project is being carried out with the support of the European Union and the geological services in Congo, which are closely involved as scientific partners.’
What is there in these records after all?
‘These contain documents from Belgian mining companies that ceased operations in the late 1960s,’ explains Overy. ‘Apart from Congo, these archives also contain information about Rwanda, Burundi and other African countries.’
Because it is a public federal collection, the collection’s contents are already publicly available to researchers. This also applies to private companies if they obtain permission from the Congolese government for a specific part of the collection.
Trump administration pressure
According to the Flemish daily De Standard, the Trump administration is putting political pressure on the museum to transfer the collection to Kobold Metals for digitization. The US President has had his eye on Congo’s mineral wealth for a long time.
‘There were technical contacts with the Congolese government a few months ago,’ confirmed a spokesman for Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot (a Francophone centrist). ‘The US Embassy had also held a meeting with our Africa Desk regarding this. This happened mainly at the diplomatic and technical level, not at the ministerial level.
Prevot’s office supports the Africa Museum’s position. ‘The digitization process is already underway between the museum and the Congolese government, and it is not the intention to give exclusively privileged or exclusive access to a private company,’ it says.
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