 The Congo possessed major uranium deposits and was one of the few sources of the material available to the Allies . Uranium extracted from the disused Shinkolobwe uranium mine , owned by the UMHK in Katanga in the southern Congo , was instrumental in the development of an atomic bomb during the American Manhattan Project . The director of UMHK , Edgar Sengier , secretly despatched half of its uranium stock to New York in 1940 ; in September 1942 , he sold it to the United States Army . 
