Royal Museum for Central Africa

The RMCA was established in 1897 and, as a multidisciplinary institution focussing on conservation, education and research. It holds the largest biodiversity collection anywhere in the world on Central Africa, offering a complete cross-section of reference material from many central African taxa. Furthermore, the majority of the specimens originate from the relatively poorly studied megadiversity belt in the equatorial region of Africa, and from West Africa. Collections from this region are relatively poorly represented in museums elsewhere in the world. RMCA is a leading multidisciplinary research institute and knowledge centre on the cultural and natural heritage in Africa, particularly in Central Africa. It develops interest and understanding for African heritage in the scientific communities and the public. The researchers carry out studies in the natural and urban environments, including historical-socio-economical aspects. Natural History manages about 10 million specimens of animals, 60,000 wood specimens, 16,000 minerals, 300,000 rocks and 21,500 fossils. The institution has about 1.2 km of Archives of unique interest like the over 10,000 letters and photographs, 88 diaries and notes of the Henry Morton Stanley collection. Human Sciences collections count about 200 000 cultural objects, more than one million of photographs, 700 movies and more than 6000 hours of traditional music and Voice recordings and 8000 musical instruments. The geological paper and digital maps collections contains …..The RMCA maintains an extensive library, including 300 scientific journals and about 130 000 monographs and serials, of which many are unique collection of rare old colonial publications. Scientific staff masters ten languages; consequently, the library and reprints are unusually multilingual