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DR Congo pushes Belgium to release colonial-era documents on mineral wealth
By Camilla Hodgson
Financial Times, London
Sunday, June 14, 2026
The Democratic Republic of Congo is upping its efforts to regain access to a trove of historic geological records stored in a Brussels museum, in a bid to accelerate the discovery of new critical mineral deposits in the country.
Louis Watum Kabamba, the Congolese minister of mines, met Belgian and EU officials this week to discuss the digitisation of millions of records being held in the Royal Museum for Central Africa, which are at the centre of a dispute between the institution and a US minerals and artificial intelligence startup.
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Bill Gates-backed KoBold Metals struck a deal last year with Kinshasa to digitise the papers but has yet to access them, while the museum plans to handle the process itself and give copies to Congolese authorities.
Belgian officials have said they cannot give exclusive access to millions of documents about the geology of the DR Congo to an overseas private company.
The case has revived tensions over Belgium's historic relationship with DR Congo, a former colony and Africa's largest copper producer. And it demonstrates the accelerating race for resources as countries worldwide seek to reduce their dependence on China for a broad array of critical minerals. ...
... For the remainder of the report:
https://www.ft.com/content/295bb78e-d669-4abd-96c8-4129620e86eb?syn-25a6b1a6=1
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