Overall, the digitization of herbaria in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has already reached a very high level. Across all institutions there are currently more than 18,000 updated and scanned images that are posted on the website of Journal Storage (JSTOR). Nevertheless, there are still about 400,000 specimens to be scanned across the country.

As one of the major herbaria of the DRC, the herbarium of Lwiro has taken advantage of this opportunity. Lwiro started this kind of work in 2011 with the support of the Botanical Garden of Meise, the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in various projects such as types and Central African endemic species, species harvested in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, and finally the Albertine Rift endemics kept in herbarium of Lwiro (LWI). Approximately 3,000 samples were updated and digitized.

The herbarium of Lwiro is situated in the east of the DRC and was created in 1953 with the goal to protect, to demonstrate value of, and to preserve the flora of the DRC. About 15,000 specimens of plants are preserved. Scanning work continues in the herbarium of Lwiro; currently about 700 samples of upper and lower plants remain to be scanned and over 2,500 specimens have been digitized and will probably be published on the website of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in the CABIN project in its second project.

With this initiative, our institution gained experience in digitization of natural history collections, but we are still looking for more training and collaboration opportunities in order to improve this work. Ultimately, we would like to digitize and publish online the complete collection to improve accessibility and keep valuable scientific data in a safe format.