Belgium – The Map Room

Who Gets to Digitize Colonial-Era Congolese Geological Maps?

Published on 5 April 20265 April 2026 by Jonathan Crowe

Reuters: “A U.S. mining company backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is in a tangle with Belgium’s AfricaMuseum over who should digitise antique maps of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo ‌in the museum’s archive.” The colonial-era records in question take up some 500 metres of shelving and are already being digitized under a separate project with the DRC. The AfricaMuseum says it can’t hand the records over to a private company; the mining startup, KoBold Metals, also has an agreement with the Kinshasa government to digitize the data. [Tara Calishain]

Apple’s New Maps Come to Five More European Countries

Published on 15 December 2022 by Jonathan Crowe

Apple’s new maps (for 2018 values of new) have launched in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. See Apple’s press releases in Dutch, French and German, and Justin O’Beirne’s before-and-after comparison. [9to5Mac/MacRumors]

Dot Density Maps of Belgium

Published on 23 February 2018 by Jonathan Crowe

Maarten Lambrechts discusses how to make a dot density population map, in technical detail. He uses QGIS to process data for his home country of Belgium. The map above is one result (he also zoomed in on Brussels).

Cartographiae, a Belgian Map Exhibition

Published on 22 July 201622 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Cartographiae, a map exhibition organized as part of a summer science and culture festival at the Belgian royal palace, opens today and runs until 4 September. Press release (in French). Admission is free; for those of us who can’t make it to Brussels, there’s an online version. [WMS]