Kolwezi is a mining town and the capital of the Lualaba Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and to the north-west of Likasi.
Likasi was created in 1937 to house the headquarters of the western mines of the Belgian company Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK). Kolwezi developed in the form of scattered neighborhoods, like other towns of the segregative type in Haut-Katanga and in colonial southern Africa. With a decision-making and residential center for European executives. In the south-east the customary center for the local population and several cities planned for the working population close to the quarries and factories of the UMHK. Almost four-fifths of the municipal territory was then within the concessions of the company.
After Katanga declared independence from the Republic of the Congo in 1960, rebels repeatedly attempted to break free from the authority of the central Congo state, then renamed the Republic of Zaire. The city of Kolwezi is organized into two communes: the commune of Dilala in the West and the commune of Manika in the East.
Located at nearly 1,500 m on the Manika plateau, Kolwezi is an important mining center for copper, cobalt, uranium and radium. The city is also a center for banking and artisanal mining. The region produces maize, cassava and peanuts, but the state of the roads makes it impossible to ensure a regular supply to the city. It is also the terminal of one of the longest high-voltage power lines in the world, the Inga-Shaba. The city has one of the main stations of the Benguela Railway, which connects it to Tenke, to the east, and to Dilolo and Lobito (on the coast of Angola), to the west. In addition, the city has Kolwezi Airport, located 6 km from the city center. The airport is state owned and has a 1526 meter runway.Itinerary:
For this tour we’ll head out around 7 am already as Kolwezi is about 6 hours drive. We’ll have lunch in the city, followed by a city tour in which we’ll cover the city center en its most important sites. In the late afternoon we’ll go to a beautiful lodge near the Nzito Lake. The morning after you’ll have time to enjoy the activities near the lake and after lunch we’ll drive back to Lubumbashi.
