Émile Pierre Joseph Storms (2 June 1846 – 12 January 1918) was a Belgian soldier, explorer, and official for the Congo Free State.

He is known for his work between 1882 and 1885 in establishing a European presence in the regions around Lake Tanganyika, during which he supported the White Fathers missionaries and attempted to suppress the East African slave trade.

He is remembered for his ruthless fight against slavery and the capture and subsequent execution of the slave trader Lusinga.

Émile Pierre Joseph Storms was born at Wetteren, East Flanders in Belgium on 2 June 1846.

He reached Karema on 27 September 1882, where he found the station still held by Lieutenant Jérôme Becker, whose term of service had expired.

However, the German scientist Richard Böhm who accompanied Storms was struck by two bullets in the leg during this action and was laid up for several months.

Storms embarked on 27 April 1883 with Böhm's companion Paul Reichard and 24 askaris and sailed to Mompara on the west shore of the lake.

Storms left Reichart to supervise the work while he went to Ujiji to buy a boat and obtain some trade goods.

[3] Storms had his people build a great square stockade 30 metres (98 ft) on each side, using five thousand trees.

[5] On 6 September 1884 Storms was visited by White Fathers missionaries led by R. P. Moinet, whom he helped to settle in Tchanza, one day south of Mpala.

On 30 November 1884 Reichart arrived at Mpala, returning from an exploration of Katanga, and told him that Böhm had died on the journey.

[3] Storms found himself in a violent confrontation with Lusinga Iwa Ngombe, a powerful slaver whom the explorer Joseph Thomson called a "sanguinary potentate".

However, when two French priests, Isaac Moinet and Auguste Moncet, reached Mpala on 5 July 1885, Captain Storms handed over the fort, arms and ammunition, a sailboat and a garrison of askaris who had been paid for six months.

However, the priests were committed to Lavigerie's dream of a Christian Kingdom in the heart of equatorial Africa, and saw the territory that Storms had acquired as the invaluable nucleus of the new state.