Copper Belt

Rescuers have been searching for the miners since early Friday after they were buried Thursday night while digging tunnels at an open-pit mine near the city of Chingola on the country’s copper belt.

Residents in the capital Lusaka as well as Kitwe and Ndola in the copper belt said they were without power.

Companies mining in Congo’s southern copper belt include Glencore subsidiary Katanga Mining, China Molybdenum’s Tenke Fungurume, MMG, and Chemaf, while Ivanhoe Mines is developing two copper mines there.

I shared mine with two others on our two-night and three-day journey: a Zambian farmer from the copper belt, who had spent time in Tanzania buying seeds, plants for his farm and bags of rice for his family, and a young South Korean, who had completed his military service and was on his way to see Victoria Falls.

Early settlers discovered ore in what became known as Vermont’s copper belt in 1793, two years after statehood.