The gold mines of Kilo-Moto are located at the extreme northeast of Zaire. They include two centers of mining operations: the gold mines of Moto in the District of the Upper Uélé and the gold mines of Kilo in the District of the Kibali-Ituri. Gold was discovered there in 1903, and the mining of gold began in 1905 in Kilo and in 1911 in Moto. The local management of the gold mines of Kilo is located at Kilomines or Bambu; and that of Moto is at Watsa.

From 1905 to 1919 Kilo-Moto was a colonial state corporation and gold was mined by the colonial administration. The mines were organized into a special service depending on the Department of Public Works in the Ministry of the Colonies in Brussels. In Africa, the Governor-General and the Governor of the Province Orientale (now Haut-Zaire) were responsible for the implementation of colonial regulations in the gold mines. Africans were recruited from the rural areas by the colonial administration to work for the gold mines.

From 1919 to 1926 the gold mines of Kilo-Moto were organized into an autonomous colonial state corporation managed by a Board of Directors in Brussels, appointed by the Minister of the Colonies. The service of the gold mines then moved from the Ministry of the Colonies to a separate building and this marked the beginning of the constitution of the Archives of Kilo-Moto. The headquarters of Kilo-Moto since 1937 have been located at 1, Place de Luxembourg in Brussels. From 1926 to 1967 Kilo-Moto was a private corporation, and the Management Committee and the Board of Directors of the private company have always operated from the same building.

Belgian archives and libraries contain essential collections of sources for the history of central Africa, although locating and gaining access to materials can be difficult, if not impossible. We hope that by describing our triumphs and failures in using these facilities in 1980/81 we can simplify these tasks for future researchers. This survey, like others existing in English, is less than complete, having been conceived only after we completed our separate research in Belgium and thus reflecting the limitations of our particular research interests. Nevertheless, the breadth of our familiarity with the facilities and of our individual interests (Dickerman worked on the history of Burundi's capital Bujumbura; Northrup on African labor in the former Province Orientale of Zaire) seems sufficient to justify this note.

In general it must be said that access to archival materials in Belgium is fairly restricted. The worst case is the Archives du Gouvernement-Général, Léopoldville/Kinshasa, the largest and most important collection for the history of the Belgian Congo. These records, estimated to occupy five to seven kilometers of shelf space, were removed from the colony just before independence and are now housed in the Archives Générales du Royaume (2-6, rue de Ruysbroek, Brussels). However, as a consequence of legal efforts by the government of Zaire to recover all or part of the collection, it has remained totally closed to all researchers.

In a note in this journal R.A. Kea advises researchers to allow at least six months for using the notarial records of the Amsterdam Municipal Archives because, he says, they have not been indexed. Although this is largely true, there is a complete index for the years 1701-1710 and about ten per cent of the other notarial records written between 1578 and 1800 have so far been indexed. The drawer of index cards for west Africa, typed in modern Dutch and arranged according to geographical location, gives the researcher a good review of the material available, since the summaries often amount to over a hundred words. The index cards may only be consulted in the archive and may not be photocopied, but it is possible to take home photocopies of manuscripts. The index will remain incomplete for many years to come. Even so, it provides a useful starting point and anyone interested in the west African coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in a single locality, will find even a day or two spent in this archive most valuable. In addition to the notarial records, the archive contains several other documents referring to west Africa.

In the summers of 1971, 1976, and 1979 I visited the archives of the Zone de Bulungu, and in 1979 those of the Sous-Région du Kwilu. Both are located in the town of Bulungu, in the Région de Bandundu of Zaire. These archives have had a checkered history. The Zone de Bulungu was named Territoire du Moyen-Kwilu during much of the colonial period, with headquarters first at Niadi (about seventy kilometers north of Kikwit), then at Kikwit, and finally at Bulungu.

The capital of the Sous-Région du Kwilu has been transferred several times--from Kikwit to Bandundu (ex-Banningville) to Kikwit to Bulungu. After a look at the archives in Bulungu, I was not satisfied that all of them had been transferred there from Kikwit, but when I was in Kikwit in April of 1979 I could find nothing more, and officials of the Sous-Région de Kikwit (the city) insisted that they had all been transferred to Bulungu in 1968.

I did not get into the archives of the Région de Bandundu, but since Robert Harms drew a blank during his visit to Bandundu, I will pass on unconfirmed and indirect information that these archives were never transferred to Bandundu, and are still at Kikwit, at the Service de Sous-Région: Cultures et Arts, whose office is next to the main marketplace in Kikwit. But I also suspect that materials generated before 1962 will be found in Kinshasa, where the archives of the Province de Léopoldville are located, for it was in 1962 that the Province de Léopoldville was broken into five smaller provinces.

As with all research conducted for academic purposes in the Ivory Coast by foreign nationals, research in the National Archives should be undertaken only with permission of the government. Such research can be carried out with a fair degree of ease in an atmosphere very conducive to research. The archives are centralized in Abidjan, which is not only the capital city but also is the point of entry for passengers who travel to the country by airplane, ship, and, to a large degree, rail. The personnel of the archives do not spare any effort to aid researchers from abroad.

To the uninitiated, explanations of its workings not only make the accrediting process appear more formidable than it really is, but also unnecessarily cumbersome. The process entails a number of separate steps. Though not mandatory, an exploratory stage, to learn if the government has any reservation about the research, is strongly recommended. In it, the researcher should file a synopsis of the proposed research with the nearest Ivoirien embassy or directly with the Ministry of the Interior. The embassy will refer the proposal to the Interior Ministry for its guidance; thus, if the researcher is in a hurry to commence his or her work, it might be wise to bypass the embassy and negotiate directly with the Ministry. However, embassies are usually more responsive to enquiries than more distant bureaus. A statement similar in form, though not necessarily as detailed, of the research design should be appended to the synopsis. It should detail the research topic, the methodology to be followed, reasons for the research, the anticipated duration of the research, affiliations with academic or research institutions at home and in the Ivory Coast, and the sources of financial support.