Archives Cultural Heritage
View our archival collections here
- Henry Morton Stanley archives
The personal archives of journalist and traveller Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) contain:
- 65 travel journals and notebooks
- 10,000 letters
- 800 drawings, photographs, slides and maps
- manuscripts and press cuttings
The Stanley archives belong to the King Baudouin Foundation. The Royal Museum for Central Africa keeps and manages and them.
Contact:
Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi
mathilde.leduc@africamuseum.be
+32 2 769 52 79
- Private individual archives - Colonial History
Some 400 archive collections covering:
- European exploration of Central Africa from the middle of the 19th century
- Leopold II’s colonial expansion policy
- the Congo Free State
- the Congo under Belgian colonial rule.
Visit the database Archives@Africamuseum to consult its contents:
- Private individual archives - Decolonisation and independant Congo
Twenty archive collections covering political developments in the DR Congo between 1950 and the present day, with 400 boxes of archives originating from private individuals who lived or worked in the Congo or who carried out research on the Congo.
The largest include:
- the Benoît Verhaegen collection (founder and former director of the Centre d'Études et de Documentation africaines, CEDAF)
- the Kithima bin Ramazani collection (archives of the Mouvement populaire de la Révolution, MPR political party)
- the Jules Gérard-Libois collection (founder and president of the Centre de recherche et d'information socio-politiques, CRISP, and the Centre d'Études et de Documentation africaines, CEDAF, a large portion of which may be consulted in the online catalogue)
- the Renée Fox collection (former professor at the University of Pennsylvania, specialist in the sociology of medicine)
- the Honoré Paelinck collection (containing documents concerning the Office national des Transports, ONATRA).
The different components of these archive collections are registered in the catalogue of the Library of Independent Congo.
- Historical archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa
The RMCA’s institutional archives contain a vast and varied collection of documents, the oldest of which date back to 1910, the year in which the building of the Museum of the Belgian Congo was inaugurated.
They include mission reports from scientists who travelled in Africa at the beginning of the colonial period.
Visit the database Archives@Africamuseum to consult its contents:
- Archives of companies and institutions
In the years that followed the Congo's independence, several major mining, forestry and railway companies and a number of Belgian institutions that had operated in the country donated their administrative archives to the museum.
Some of these collections have been catalogued by the Association pour la valorisation des archives d’entreprises (AVAE-VVBA).
Visit the database Archives@Africamuseum to consult its contents:
- Maps and plans
Maps from the 15th to the 20th century
The collection holds approximately 3,500 maps of Africa from the 15th to the 20th century.
It includes 600 ancient maps, an exceptional record of the history of European-African relations over six centuries.
The administrative and thematic maps of the colonial period (19th-20th centuries) are primarily of the DR Congo and its neighbours.
Contact:
Nancy Vanderlinden
nancy.vanderlinden@africamuseum.be
+32 2 769 52 66Maps from 1948 to the present day
This collection comprises 133 maps.
These are:
- ethnographic maps
- road maps
- geological maps
- population density maps
- etc.
The maps are of the DR Congo’s provinces, regions and cities (Kisangani, Kinshasa, Lubumbashi) from 1948 to the present day.
Contact:
Lore Van De Broeck
lore.van.de.broeck@africamuseum.be
+32 2 769 58 45
- Press
The museum has a subscription with the main newspapers published in Kinshasa:
- Le Soft International
- Le Phare
- La Référence Plus
- Le Potentiel
- La Tempête des tropiques
- L’Observateur.
It also has more than 700 Congolese newspapers from the 1950s to the present day, including Le Palmarès, Elima and Salongo, as well as press agency reports (AZap, ACP, APA).
In addition, it has a large collection of periodicals, including Congolese periodicals such as:
- Congo-Afrique (Kinshasa)
- Likundoli (Lubumbashi)
- the Annals of various Congolese university faculties
- Cahiers économiques et sociaux (Kinshasa)
- Etudes congolaises (Kinshasa)
- Problèmes sociaux zaïrois (Lubumbashi)
- L’Africain (Charleroi)
- etc.
Contact:
Lore Van De Broeck
lore.van.de.broeck@africamuseum.be
+32 2 769 58 45
- Audiovisual sources
The audiovisual collection contains some 650 film archives in 35, 16 and 8 mm format.
The majority come from the former Office de l’Information et des Relations Publiques pour le Congo Belge et le Ruanda-Urundi (Inforcongo), the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK) and private individuals.
They deal with various aspects of the Belgian Congo and the colonial world, and their propaganda, between 1940 and 1960.
The collection also contains documentaries and reports in various media formats, along with sound recordings broadcast on Belgian and Congolese radio between 1952 and 1960.
There is also a large collection of interviews on DVD of Belgian and Congolese people who experienced the colonial period. These interviews were conducted in French by the non-profit organisation Mémoires du Congo and in Dutch by the non-profit organisation Afrika Getuigenissen, as well as by the RMCA for a number of exhibition projects.
Contact:
Sophie de Ville
sophie.de.ville@africamuseum.be
+32 2 769 57 31
Archives for geological studies and ore prospection in Central Africa
- Field notes and archives of mining companies concerning Central Africa (essentially the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi).
- Reconnaissance, prospection, mapping and geological studies of various regions of the DRC by Belgian and foreign geologists, mainly in the form of unpublished reports.
- Correspondence between mining company agents and their decision-making bodies, in the DRC and in Belgium.
For the DRC, DRCmining can be used to search the archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa and various Congolese institutes.
Companies interested in the Congo mining sector may visit the department and consult its archives.
Contact:
Florias Mees
florias.mees@africamuseum.be
+32 2 769 57 42