Qualla: Kamatanda

Kamatanda: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. A Bloomberg reporter who visited Kamatanda in 2008 described what she saw: a 2.5-square-kilometre patch of ground pitted with holes up to 25 metres deep, dug by men, women and children using hammers, chisels, hand shovels and bare hands. They climbed down without ladders, barefoot, wearing thin clothes, using candles and head torches to see in the horizontal corridors they had carved through the rock. When they filled a 110-pound bag of ore, a state agency called Saesscam took 18 cents from them. Middlemen bought the bag, paid other people to wash it in the river, and sold it to a smelter in Lubumbashi, where it became part of the global cobalt supply. This was happening on a mine formally owned by Gecamines, the Congolese state, on what had been, for centuries before any of the European companies arrived, Sanga ground.

Read more: Kamatanda on Qualla

Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Kamatanda: Centuries of Copper

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. Long before any Belgian set foot in Katanga, the Sanga people were mining copper along the line of hills between the Lufira and the Lualaba. Their workings extended through Kamatanda, Likasi, Kambove, Msesa, Kalabi and Kakanda. Between 1850 and 1910 alone, those operations may ha...

Read more: Kamatanda on Qualla

Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Kamatanda: Union Miniere and a Strike

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. UMHK took over the mine in 1906, and Emile Richet wrote a prospecting report in 1923 that described the Kamatanda block in detail. Plans of the polygon survive from 1914 through 1923. In 1932 a report described three test wells of 20 metres and the galleries and trenches dug to f...

Read more: Kamatanda on Qualla

Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Kamatanda: Gecamines and the Pit Economy

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. In December 1966, a year after his coup, Mobutu Sese Seko seized UMHK's assets; in January 1967 they passed to a parastatal that was renamed Gecamines in 1971. For a while Kamatanda continued as an industrial mine - 57,000 tonnes of copper and 4,000 tonnes of cobalt annual capaci...

Read more: Kamatanda on Qualla

Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Kamatanda: The Children in the Pits

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MONUSCO Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 2010, about 400 children from Kamatanda and the surrounding villages were working alongside roughly 2,000 adult diggers in the pits. They sorted, carried and cleaned the ore, earning under $4 a day. Their parents, often depending on the income to feed the family, kept them out...

Read more: Kamatanda on Qualla

Image: MONUSCO Photos | CC BY-SA 2.0