Copperbelt

▪ province, Zambia

formerly  Western  

      province, central Zambia, East Africa, bounded by the provinces of North-Western (west) and Central (south). It borders Congo (Kinshasa) on the north and east. The region lies on the eastern Central African Plateau, with gently undulating terrain mostly between 3,000 and 5,000 feet (900 and 1,500 metres) in elevation and occasionally broken by isolated hills. The Kafue River, tributary to the Zambezi River, traverses the province in a generally southward direction, and swamps occur along the river and its numerous tributaries. Broad areas of the plateaus are covered with an open mixture of shrubs, trees, and tall grasses.

      Discoveries at Gwisho brought to light remains of the Wilton culture (Late Stone Age culture in South Africa) dating from 3,000 BC. Early, Middle, and Late Stone Age, and Early Iron Age sites are in the province, as well as a number of rock paintings (c. AD 500–1750). Chiefdoms dominated by the Lamba, Lima, and Lala peoples rose in the early 17th century, and after raiding the area, the Chikunda later settled there. The 1890s treaties with the British South Africa Company brought the territory into what became in 1924 the colony of Northern Rhodesia, ruled by a legislative council with a white majority. In the northern mining towns popular African discontent found effective expression against colonial rule, especially after the federation (1953) of Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and under the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda. Upon independence (1964) the area became a province of the new state of Zambia.

      The province is industrially advanced and urbanized and its modern peoples are the Bemba, Lamba, and Swahili. Subsistence agriculture produces corn (maize), tobacco, peanuts (groundnuts), potatoes, and fodder crops. Commercial farming goes on near urban centres and includes beef cattle and pigs. The Copperbelt industrial area lies on the Congo-Zambezi watershed near the Congo border and contains mineral deposits. Copper is mined at Ndola, the capital of the province, and also at Chambishi, Kalulushi, Chililabombove, Mufulira, Chingola, Kitwe, and Luanshya, all of which are connected by road, railway, and air. Other minerals mined include cobalt and uranium. Industries produce beverages, metal products, batteries, chemicals, wire and cable, cement, and textiles. Area 12,096 square miles (31,328 square km). Pop. (2000) 1,581,221.

▪ region, Africa

      in African geography, zone of copper deposits and associated mining and industrial development dependent upon them, forming the greatest concentration of industry in black Africa outside the Republic of South Africa. The belt extends about 280 miles (450 km) northwest from Luanshya, Zambia, into the Katanga (formerly Shaba) region of Congo (Kinshasa). The zone is up to 160 miles in width and contains more than a tenth of the world's copper deposits, found mostly in Late Precambrian sedimentary deposits with the ore concentrated in zones indicative of hilltop and beach, or near-shore, environments. Estimates of total reserves range from 57,000,000 to 90,000,000 metric tons in the two countries, about 11 to 27 percent of the world total.

      The deposits had been known and worked for centuries before 1867, when David Livingstone described the smelting of ore by Katangan natives into 50- to 100-pound (22.5- to 45-kilogram) ingots. Exploitation of the deposits during the colonial period was always separate in the two countries. It began in the Belgian Congo (now Congo [Kinshasa]) with the formation in 1906 of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (nationalized in 1967 as Gécamines, La Générale des Carrières et des Mines), which during the early 1930s was the largest copper-producing company in the world. The first copper-mining claim in Zambia, the Roan Antelope, was pegged in 1902, after W.C. Collier, a Bulawayo (Southern Rhodesia) prospector, shot the eponymous beast, which fell upon a deposit of green malachite copper ore. Commercial development in Zambia began in 1909, after the railroad reached Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia); the same rail line also opened the Katangan deposits of the Belgian Congo when it later reached northward to Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi, Congo) in 1910. Extensive commercial exploitation did not occur in Zambia until the late 1920s, when concessions were granted by the British South African Company. One of these concessionaires, the Selection Trust, developed the first modern mine at the Roan Antelope deposit near Luanshya; it came into production in 1929. The Nkana mine was developed in the same year, followed by those in Mufulire (1933), Nchanga (1939), Chibaluma (1955), and Chambishi (1965).

      The exploitation and export of these ores has long been one of the most complicated geopolitical and economic questions of the region, not only because of colonial (and later nationalistic) rivalries but also because of the energy requirements of the smelters (Zambia smelts almost all of its ore; Congo only about half). These requirements were satisfied earliest by coal from Wankie, Southern Rhodesia (now Hwange, Zimbabwe), and later by hydroelectrical power transmitted from the Kariba power station to the Copperbelt about 230 miles southeast of Luanshya and to Congo's smelters from Inga, on the Congo River about 1,000 miles northwest of Katanga. These difficulties have been exacerbated by the problems of exporting the ore via, successively: the Cape (rail) route (after 1909); the Benguela Railroad (after 1933); the Belgian Congo's Voie National, a railroad connecting Elizabethville (Lubumbashi) with Port-Francqui (Ilebo) for transshipment to Kinshasa-Matadi; the Kamina-Albertville (Congo); the Kigoma–Dar es Salaam–Umtali–Beira; and, most recently, the Tazara railroad.

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