EXPLOIT CB EXPO
READING an article titled “Freedom fighters ready for CB expo” in the March 2, 2019 Daily Nation issue encouraged me to share some ideas I have about the Copperbelt Investment Expo in June this year.
Impressive economic growth, falling poverty levels and the startling possibility of massive attraction of a lot of development resulting from various investors, both local and international would undoubtedly see the Copperbelt to be a region on the up.
That is what the government officials and the Copperbelt-based mining investors would have us believe but the impending provincial investment expo is far more nuanced than it first appears.
Although successive PF governments have invested heavily in roads, health and education and the province is reaping dividends. Perhaps because there is very little in the way of wildlife and scenic natural tourist attractions, the government has bet heavily in other provinces
like Southern, Eastern and Northern provinces.
As such, the consensus today is that the Copperbelt has not peaked as a holiday destination. Yet, it is still viewed as a future draw for domestic tourists.
Perfect as it seems, that pinpoints Bwana Mkubwa, the oldest mine in Zambia’s Copperbelt region. As a settlement with no municipal status, it became a settlement due to the abundant copper deposits found in the area. Several versions of the origin of the name have been given.
Most likely, William Collier and Jack Donohoe, who were led to the ancient workings, named the mining area “Bwana Mkubwa” after Francis Emilius Fletcher Jones, Native Commissioner, who was known to the locals as the “Bwana Mkubwa.”
Paradoxically, defunct sections of Bwana Mkubwa mine are evocative of the National Coal Mining Museum for England which is based at the site of Caphouse Colliery in Overton, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire,
England. It opened in 1988 as the Yorkshire Mining Museum and was granted national status in 1995. The museum offers
underground tours where visitors can experience the conditions miners worked in and see the tools and machines they used as the industry and the mine developed through the years.
Above ground, there is a visitors’ centre which houses exhibitions on the social and industrial history of the mines. The extensive library and archive contains issues of “Coal News” and details of collieries throughout England.
Other features include the pit head baths, steam winding house, boiler house and coal screening plant. It is possible to see former working pit ponies, ride the paddy train and follow the ope Pit and water filtration tanks.
Other precincts of the National Coal Mining Museum for England bear a startling resemblance to Bwana Mkubwa mine.
The money from tourism could have already started flowing if only the disused mine was turned into the National Copper Mining Museum for Zambia.
And yet it would be at the Zambia International Trade Fair that would be held simultaneously that the high business returns of the Copperbelt Investment Expo boom would be most obvious. Could this be cynical hyperbole? Not entirely.
MUBANGA LUCHMBE, Lusaka.