- The US miner says the data is essential to deploying its AI-driven search for lithium, cobalt, and copper.
- Belgian officials and museum authorities have refused to release the archives before full public digitisation.
- The standoff highlights growing tensions over control of critical mineral intelligence in Africa in the clean energy race.
The company, backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, is seeking to analyse millions of archived documents housed at Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa, commonly known as the Africa Museum.
The data, compiled during the colonial era, is considered critical for mapping deposits of lithium, cobalt, and copper, minerals central to the global energy transition.
KoBold, which has signed exploration agreements with Kinshasa to assess lithium potential in the southern Manono region, argues that the archival material is essential to deploying its artificial intelligence-driven exploration tools. Without access, the company says it cannot effectively evaluate the country’s geological prospects.
The standoff highlights a broader tension between scientific custodianship and commercial urgency. Belgian authorities have refused to hand over the original records, maintaining that the documents must first be digitised under public oversight.
The California-based miner recently disclosed it had raised $537 million in fresh funding to scale its AI-powered search for critical minerals worldwide. The firm says the capital will support exploration across five continents.
Officials at the Africa Museum have urged caution about expectations tied to the archives. François Kervyn, who heads the museum’s earth sciences department, stressed that historical records alone cannot pinpoint mineral discoveries, noting that “there is no map that tells you to dig here or there and you will find lithium”.
Museum director Bart Ouvry nonetheless acknowledged that the documents remain highly valuable, particularly because they reference minerals that were overlooked decades ago but are now strategically important for modern technologies.
Belgium has already pledged to return the archives to the Congolese government after digitisation is complete. However, KoBold has pushed to conduct the digitisation in-house to accelerate its exploration timeline.
The museum has rejected that proposal, warning that giving a single private company control of the process would create an unfair commercial advantage and conflict with its public scientific mandate.
Despite the impasse, Kinshasa and KoBold signed an agreement in July 2025 to expand public access to historical geoscientific data through the National Geological Service of Congo. Under the deal, the company would deploy a team to begin digitisation work at the Africa Museum.
Belgium’s Science Policy Minister Vanessa Matz has pushed back, insisting the arrangement does not bind Brussels. She emphasised that Belgium will determine how the documents are handled until digitisation is completed.
Meanwhile, the European Union has committed funding to support the broader digitisation effort. A team of scientists began work in February 2026, with archivists scheduled to join in March.
Officials say the process of cataloguing and digitising the vast archive could take several years before the data becomes widely accessible.
For investors and policymakers alike, the outcome could shape not only the future of AI-driven mineral exploration but also the evolving debate over ownership of colonial-era scientific data in resource-rich African states.
