Belgian museum, US mining company at odds over DRC archive – SABC News

A United States mining company backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is in a tangle with Belgium’s Africa Museum over who should digitise antique maps of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, in the museum’s archive.
Mining startup KoBold Metals said it had offered to support the DRC in digitising the colonial-era archive, stored on museum shelves stretching some 500 m and containing millions of documents that record how the central African country’s mineral wealth was mapped and exploited.
“We scan, we digitise the documents, and make them accessible to the public immediately,” Benjamin Katabuka, Director General for KoBold Metals in DRC, told Reuters.
“This country needs more investment in exploration, and we need the data to be available to the public to make that happen.”
The Belgian museum, backed by Belgian authorities, has refused, saying it already has a separate project with the DRC to digitise the data, backed by the European Union.
“We cannot delegate the management of collections to private companies; it would go against all scientific and institutional ethics,” museum director Bart Ouvry told Reuters.
KoBold received permits last year to search for lithium and other minerals in DRC and struck agreements with Kinshasa to digitise data, including records held in Belgium, it said. Katabuka said the request for access to the archive was made by the DRC government.
“KoBold is coming to support the project, technically and financially,” he said.
KoBold pointed to a 2022 Belgian law that created a framework for returning colonial-era collections to African States.
However, archives are excluded. Ouvry said the museum is working with DRC’s National Geological Service to digitise and share the geological archives in a project expected to take up to five years.
Data would be available in both countries “in accordance with Belgian and European law,” he said. DRC’s Ministry of Mines did not respond to requests for comment.
 
 

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