Belgian museum and US firm in fight over Congo minerals data

https://www.dw.com/en/belgian-museum-and-us-startup-in-dispute-over-over-colonial-era-resource-data/a-77585740

The Democratic Republic of Congo wants access to colonial-era geological data held in Belgium. A US mining startup says it can digitize it. So why won't the museum that stores the archive let the company have it?

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But the AfricaMuseum is not keen on the proposal. "We would like to work with them on certain files — but what we could not accept was their proposal to take over our entire geological archive," AfricaMuseum Director Bart Ouvry told DW.

"The privatization of a complete archive is not possible for us. We would consider it unethical to leave this to a company."

A museum digitization project is already ongoing — in cooperation with the National Geological Survey of the DRC and supported by the European Union, Ouvry explained.

"We started development two years ago. When they [KoBold Metals] approached us last year, our project was already quite advanced. Production actually began in January. We have hired staff for this work, because part of it is technical, but the majority is scientific in nature and must be carried out by our own scientists," Ouvry said

The National Geological Survey of the DRC has also given the AfricaMuseum "priority," according to Ouvry. "We will prioritize three regions that are currently most important to the Congolese government, and the data for those regions will be transferred to them very soon."

Within four to five years, the entire archive is expected to be digitized and made available to the public in accordance with Belgian and European law, Ouvry said