Copperbelt

The Copperbelt is a natural region in Central Africa located on the border of northern Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, known for its copper mining. The region traditionally includes Zambia's Copperbelt Province and the Congo's Haut-Katanga and Lualaba provinces, but in some contexts it may exclude the Congo. The area became a province in Zambia soon after independence in 1964 and was renamed Copperbelt Province in 1969. The Copperbelt was not inhabited until the arrival of the Lamba people from the Luba and Lunda kingdoms, who settled in the area and established the Lamba kingdom. The region was not discovered by Westerners until 1895, when American scout Frederick Russell Burnham led an expedition that determined that major copper deposits existed in Central Africa. During the 1950s, the Copperbelt was the largest copper-producing area in the world, and the area remains rich in mineral wealth due to the Katanga Supergroup, a Neoproterozoic sequence of geological formations that are well-studied for their rich stratiform copper-cobalt deposits.learn more on wikipedia