Science news
January 2022Backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, Re:wild, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and BirdLife International have launched The Search for Lost Birds, an initiative to find 10 bird species that have not been seen for decades. Among these 10 species is Prigogine's Nightjar, a species described by an ornithologist from the AfricaMuseum and whose only known specimen has been kept in Tervuren since 1955.
November 2021In Congo en vitrine author Sarah Van Beurden studies the interconnected histories of the Institut des Musées nationaux du Zaïre/Congo and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren.
November 2021On 28 October 2021, the AfricaMuseum transferred over 4000 digitised sound recordings of Rwandan musical traditions from its collections to the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy. This transfer is one of the projects carried out in the framework of the SHARE programme. This cooperation programme between Belgium and Rwanda aims to share heritage and build capacity in conservation and collection management with museums and research institutes.
October 2021King Kigeli V Ndahindurwa (1936-2016) was the last king of Rwanda. His short reign from 1959 to 1961 as Mwami of Rwanda, then under Belgian trusteeship, was very eventful.
September 2021The State Archives and the Royal Museum for Central Africa have published a source guide to the history of colonisation. This new publication identifies and locates all archives available in Belgium dating from the colonial period of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The book in two volumes is also accessible online.
September 2021Man-made lakes are breeding grounds for invasive species such as freshwater snails. Because snails can transmit parasites, the lakes are crawling with parasites that infect hippos. This is what biologists have observed in artificial lakes in Zimbabwe. Fueling infectious diseases is an indirect consequence of human intervention in nature that is still too often overlooked, the researchers say.
August 2021Scientists studying tropical forests in Africa’s mountains were surprised to uncover how much carbon they store, and how fast some of these forests are being cleared.
August 2021New research shows how deforestation and population growth have greatly impacted landslide risk in the Kivu Rift. This is what researchers from KU Leuven, the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the Université Libre de Bruxelles established from an analysis of six decades of forest cover and population trends in the region. The study is published in Nature Sustainability.
June 2021Recent research has shown that the carbon sink of tropical forests in Africa and Amazonia is saturated and will decline. However, current climate models are unable to reproduce these natural dynamics, according to a new study. The models even predict a slightly increasing carbon uptake. It is necessary to adjust these models, as they are at the basis of global climate policy.
May 2021Three scientists from the AfricaMuseum are going to help monitor the activity of the Nyiragongo volcano on site in Goma (Democratic Republic of Congo). They will do so with the support of the Belgian government, notably Ministers Meryame Kitir (Development Cooperation) and Thomas Dermine (State Secretary for Scientific Policy).