But he had been drawn to Africa, even before the war, so he applied when Belgium wanted officers for overseas service in Belgian colonies.

After a month and a half at Officers' School in September 1915, he left for Africa, first for Cameroon, then Kitega (the principal town of Urundi, present-day Burundi) where he arrived in August 1916.

He was then posted to Mahenge in German East Africa (part of present-day Tanzania) in 1917, returning to Kitega in July 1918.

The chiefs were fighting for power; the Mwami (king), Mutaga IV, had died in 1915, leaving as heir, Mwambatsu, a boy of only five years of age.

Ryckmans worked to create a regency council, including some political opponents, and then made it adopt reforms pertaining to land tenure and cattle contracts.

He then returned to Africa for six months in 1931–32 as a member of a commission tasked with studying the labour problem, and was put in charge of Congo-Kasai province.

Harsh reforms introduced by the previous Governor-General, Auguste Tilkens, had discouraged employees from working in the civil service.

Therefore, some of the reforms he wanted – such as recruiting magistrates from the ranks of local experienced administrative officers with a law degree - could not be put into practice.

Ryckmans also stressed the importance of the independence of administration from private interests, such as the large mining companies, and the right of both Protestants and Catholics to receive government subsidies for their schools.

Two daughters, who first fled as refugees into France with their aunt, managed to get to Lisbon, and were reunited with their parents in September, while two of his sons spent the whole war in Belgium.

The Governor-General had received no instructions from the Belgian government in exile, established in London, which since its hesitations in July 1940 had lost much of its prestige.

In 1960, during the chaos that followed the independence of the Congo, his son, André Ryckmans [nl], who was a civil servant in Bas-Congo, was in a helicopter looking for isolated Europeans.

In 1962, father and son were posthumously ennobled by King Baudouin of Belgium and given the title of Graaf (count) in the Belgian nobility.