Comité National du Kivu (CNKI):
CNKI was a colonial-era organization created by the Belgians to manage resources and economic activities in the Kivu region (eastern DRC). It acted as a tool of economic control, overseeing agricultural plantations, mining activities, and other colonial enterprises in Kivu. CNKI worked closely with Belgian settlers and corporations to extract wealth, ensuring profits flowed to Belgium while locals remained marginalized.
Immoaf (Immobilière Africaine):
Immoaf was a real estate and land management company during the colonial era, closely tied to Belgium’s economic interests in the DRC. It controlled vast tracts of land for plantations, mining infrastructure, and housing for colonial administrators. It played a role in dispossessing local communities, concentrating land ownership in the hands of foreign companies and colonial elites mainly in the region of Kinshasa, Bas-Congo, Bandundu, Equateur and Haut-Congo.
Cominiere and Union Minière du Haut Katanga entities were created by the Belgian colonists to control the diamond mines in Kasai and copper and cobalt mines in Katanga province.
Even after independence, some of these land titles remained in the hands of foreign investors and transferred to mining conglomerates such as LONRHO and BANRO.
With the current energy transition process, the critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, coltan, manganese and graphite which are found massively in the DRC provinces, have created a huge appetite from some western countries. Belgium saw it as a unique opportunity to return to DRC and exploit it on behalf of the EU and USA. This is the hidden agenda which is fuelling conflict in DRC eastern provinces.
The four entities represent the colonial economic machinery that turned the DRC into a resource extraction zone. Though these entities may no longer hold formal power, their legacy lives on in land conflicts, economic inequalities, and foreign control over Congolese wealth.
How could this happen 65 years after independence?
In 1966, JD Mobutu, young Congolese president after a coup, signed the new constitution which included the “Bakajika law” cancelling all colonial land titles and giving back all the lands, waters and air to the government of DR Congo.
But in 2006, President Joseph Kabila, looking for his power consolidation, was forced by Belgian minister of foreign affairs to amend and remove from the new constitution the “Bakajika law”.
Automatically all former colonial land titles gained back their validity. Today, it is just a matter of time before we see representatives from big mining companies around the world, which bought the 4 Belgian colonial entities assets in DRC, claiming back “their lands” and its underground. For your knowledge, see the map hereafter which shows Rwanda western province lands as CNKI asset.
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