The Baptist Missionary Society mission was established between 1895 and 1896 at the highest navigable point of the Congo, just below the Stanley Falls.

[3] The mission embarked on a program of educating local people, who in turn became teachers in village schools.

In January 1907 the governor-general Albert Lantonnois ordered the district commissioner of the Orientale Province to take vigorous measures to counter the influence of the Protestants.

Dr. Chesterman developed a network of community clinics staffed by Congolese to address the epidemic of sleeping sickness.

In the early 1930s the local Mbole people began to be pressed into working on plantations and building roads.