A colonial archive with modern value
Located at the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, just outside Brussels, a vast geological archive holds nearly 500 metres of records dating back to the Belgian colonial era. The collection includes centuries‑old maps, mining concessions, survey reports, and field notebooks compiled by Belgian geologists and mining companies before the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) gained independence in 1960.
Although the original focus was on copper and gold, many documents also reference cobalt, lithium, and other strategic minerals. Together, they cover one of the world’s richest mineral belts—a region that today supplies copper, cobalt, coltan, lithium, and other materials essential for electric vehicles, smartphones, renewable‑energy systems, and defence technologies.
According to Francois Kervyn, the museum’s geologist who led the digitisation project, “the content of the documents is absolutely incredible… the result of enormous work by people who dedicated large parts of their lives to field observations, often travelling to completely unexplored regions without the positioning tools we have today.”
Kinshasa is pushing for faster access
The DRC government has long sought access to these Belgian-held geological files, arguing that they could help identify unexplored deposits, attract investment, and strengthen state control over a mining sector valued by the U.S. International Trade Administration at roughly $24 trillion.
Momentum grew after U.S.-based mining technology firm KoBold Metals entered the debate. In 2023 the AfricaMuseum declined KoBold’s offer to digitise the Tervuren records, with Director‑General Bart Ouvry explaining that granting a private company a multi‑year monopoly “seemed difficult.”
KoBold subsequently secured a “strategic partnership” with the Congolese government to digitise mining data held in the DRC, including records at the University of Lubumbashi. According to Benjamin Katabuka, head of KoBold Metals DRC, the project began in April 2024 and has already processed around 170 000 pages, making scanned documents available to investors online in under a minute.
Belgium and Congo are working on a roadmap
The issue rose on the diplomatic agenda after Congolese Mines Minister Louis Watum Kabamba met with Belgian and European Union officials to discuss the transfer and digitisation of the Brussels‑based archive. A spokesperson for Congo’s mining ministry said the government wants to begin implementation quickly because “the discovery of new mineral deposits needs to be accelerated,” noting that “a very large part of the DRC has not yet been explored.”
Following those talks, the two sides agreed to create a joint digitalisation and return roadmap and to establish a task force to oversee the process. The ministry described the initiative as a step toward strengthening the DRC’s “geoscience sovereignty” and increasing the competitiveness of its mining industry.
Congo tightens control over cobalt
Parallel to the archive effort, Kinshasa has moved to assert greater influence over cobalt—a battery metal central to the global energy transition. In late 2025 the DRC imposed a quarterly export limit of 18 125 tonnes for the fourth quarter and set an annual quota of 96 600 tonnes for 2026, including a strategic reserve of 10 percent.
Under the new framework, unused cobalt export rights will be seized and transferred to a government‑controlled reserve. The directive from the strategic minerals regulator ARECOMS states that any quota allocated for the first half of 2026 that remains unused by 30 June will expire and become part of the regulator’s “strategic quota.”
These measures aim to curb speculative hoarding, ensure a steady supply for domestic processing, and increase state revenue from a commodity that accounted for over 70 percent of global cobalt production in 2023.
Global powers circle Congo’s minerals
Competition for the DRC’s mineral wealth is intensifying. China continues to dominate large segments of the country’s cobalt and copper sectors, while the United States and Europe seek to expand their footholds as they diversify supply chains for critical minerals.
The Belgian colonial archive, once a relic of extraction, could now become a tool for the DRC to renegotiate its position in the global market. By providing detailed historical geological knowledge, the archive may help Kinshasa identify new deposits, negotiate better terms with foreign investors, and reduce reliance on external expertise.
As Francois Kervyn notes, “the documents are not just historical curiosities; they are a living database that can inform modern exploration strategies.” For a nation whose subsoil holds an estimated $24 trillion in mineral wealth, unlocking that knowledge could be a decisive step toward greater economic sovereignty.
