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🇿🇦 South Africa /Economy & Trade

PODCAST: Young Zambians are betting on the copper boom. Will it be different this time?

From Daily Maverick · () English

Summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • Rising copper prices and global demand are drawing young Zambians toward mining as a route to personal and national prosperity.
  • Students and lecturers at Copperbelt University expect the expanding industry to create jobs, despite outdated facilities and limited resources.
  • The episode also highlights concerns over polluted water, ageing infrastructure and opaque deals that could repeat Zambia’s resource-curse experience.

In Kitwe, the copper boom is visible before a visitor reaches the mine. Hotel billboards advertise “copper-ful” hospitality, trucks carry mining equipment through the streets, and Copperbelt University has seen the number of mining students quadruple in five years.

Radio Workshop’s latest episode, “Copper Town,” follows students preparing to enter an industry that offers both danger and hope. Rose Mpanza, a final-year mining engineering student, interns at a copper shaft nearly two kilometres deep. During the 10-minute journey underground, she says, some colleagues pray. They still go to work.

We are here because we believe that through mining we are going to become rich. Not just me, but Zambia is going to become rich.

· Rose MpanzaThe mining engineering student explains why she and other young Zambians are choosing careers in the copper industry.

For Mpanza and many other young Zambians, mining represents a way out of poverty and a route to national prosperity. Zambia has some of the world’s richest copper deposits, while demand is rising for the metal used in renewable-energy systems and artificial-intelligence data centres. Prices are climbing, mines are hiring and young people want a place in the expansion.

Zambia is moving at a very fast pace.

· Jobrin NyirendaThe environmental engineering student comments on the foreign investment and visible expansion around Copperbelt University.

But Zambia has seen this story before. Resource booms can enrich foreign countries while leaving polluted water and environmental damage behind. The young people featured in “Copper Town” want a different ending. That includes students training for professional roles and young men searching illegally through mine waste dumps for whatever remains.

At Copperbelt University, environmental engineering student Jobrin Nyirenda points to signs of foreign and corporate investment: chairs donated by China, a library funded by the US embassy and a wildlife park donated by a mining company. “Zambia is moving at a very fast pace,” he says.

One thing about lacking resources is that it makes you creative. You can do a lot with a little.

· Mambwe MsondaThe geomatics engineering student responds to the university’s outdated and under-resourced facilities.

The campus also shows the limits of that progress. Final-year mining classrooms still display dusty models donated by the industry in the 1980s, even as mining becomes more technologically advanced. Students say limited resources force them to be creative. Lecturer Professor Peter Chileshe expects the university’s roughly 30 graduates to find jobs directly with mines or contractors within a year or two. The episode’s central question remains whether this generation can gain more from the boom than a hole in the ground.

Within a year or two, all our 30 or so graduates will get jobs directly from the mines themselves and the contractors.

· Professor Peter ChilesheThe lecturer predicts strong employment prospects for the graduating mining students.
About this summary

Originally published by Daily Maverick. Summarized and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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