Nkana Mine and Nkana District

One of Africa's largest copper mines, defining industrial landmark of Kitwe

Nkana is both the mine and the neighbourhood surrounding it — one of the oldest parts of Kitwe, developed in the 1930s to house mine workers and management in the racially segregated pattern typical of British colonial mining towns. The mine itself is the largest copper producer in Zambia and one of the largest in Africa. The headframes and processing facilities are visible from the road on the city's western side.

The mine is not open to casual visitors, but the Nkana district around it has some of the oldest colonial-era housing in the Copperbelt, and the Coppermine Road on the perimeter gives a sense of the scale of the operation. For a deeper look at the industry's history, the Copperbelt Museum in nearby Ndola — about 60km east — is the most comprehensive resource in the region.

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A story
Copper was discovered at Nkana in 1923 and mining began in 1931. At its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, when Zambia was the world's third-largest copper producer, Nkana was one of the most productive mines on earth. The collapse of copper prices in the late 1970s devastated the Zambian economy in a single decade. The mines were privatised and foreign-owned by the 1990s, and production has partially recovered — but the cautionary tale of Zambia's resource curse is written into the Copperbelt landscape.

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