The copper series, part four: the history
Frederick russell burnham observes malachite staining near Kansanshi. the green of oxidised copper on exposed rock. the beginning of the European recorded history of Zambian copper.
kansanshi identified. the oldest continuously operating copper mine in zambia. still producing today, operated by first quantum minerals. a thread connecting the colonial prospecting era directly to the present.
malachite staining along the mufulira stream. the beginning of what would become mufulira mine — more than ten million tonnes of refined copper across ninety-five years of continuous operation.
1925 to 1930. systematic discovery of the copperbelt core. nkana. nchanga. roan antelope. mufulira. deposits of exceptional scale and quality, recognised almost immediately. capital from the rhodesian selection trust and anglo american corporation. an ownership structure that would define the copperbelt for the next four decades.
1931 to 1939. production begins even as the great depression suppresses prices. the infrastructure of the copperbelt is built — the towns, the roads, the railways, the power lines. built on terms that extracted maximum value for mining companies and shareholders while providing the minimum necessary for the african workforce that made the extraction possible. the labour conditions, the racial hierarchy, and the economic structure of the colonial copperbelt are part of this history.
zambian independence. kenneth kaunda and unip inherit a country whose primary economic asset — the copper mines — is owned and operated by foreign capital, with the majority of profits leaving zambia. the new government faces immediately the central question the series has been building towards. how does a country with a world-class mineral endowment ensure that the wealth it generates stays in the country?
the mulungushi reforms. the matero declaration. zambia acquires a 51 percent controlling interest in the major copper mining companies. the beginning of zccm. kaunda's vision: zambian ownership of zambian resources, revenues funding a diversified economy that would reduce dependence on the single commodity colonial rule had left behind.
what followed — the oil shocks, the copper price collapse, the management challenges of zccm, structural adjustment, privatisation — is a story of how difficult it is to translate resource ownership into broad-based economic development, and how vulnerable a single-commodity economy is to external shocks it cannot control.
that story is what the next posts will address.
because the decisions zambia made about copper in 1969 are still shaping the decisions it needs to make in 2026. 🟠
