Qualla: Katanga Province

Katanga Province: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Familents, CC BY-SA 3.0. The uranium that destroyed Hiroshima came from a mine called Shinkolobwe. Before anyone in the American Manhattan Project had heard the word, Belgian geologists working for Union Miniere du Haut Katanga had already extracted uranium ore of a grade that has never been matched, anywhere, before or since. The mine lay in a remote corner of a province the Belgians had taken by force from a king named Msiri. That mine is closed now. The province itself was dissolved in 2015, broken into four smaller provinces. But Katanga - the name, the identity, the memory - refuses to go away.

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Image: Familents | CC BY-SA 3.0

Katanga Province: The Copperbelt

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Opoku Akaadom Sympathy, CC0. Copper mining in Katanga dates back over a thousand years. By the end of the 10th century, local smiths were producing standard-sized copper ingots for long-distance trade - these crosses of copper moved through networks that reached the Indian Ocean coast and the Zambezi valley....

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Image: Opoku Akaadom Sympathy | CC0

Katanga Province: Msiri and the Belgians

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the 1890s Katanga was beleaguered from two directions. From the south came Cecil Rhodes, pushing up from Northern Rhodesia. From the north came the agents of King Leopold II of Belgium, whose private Congo Free State wanted the copperbelt for itself. In the middle stood Msiri,...

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Image: Didier Descouens | CC BY-SA 3.0

Katanga Province: Shinkolobwe and the Bomb

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alinda Friday, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1915 UMHK geologists discovered a deposit of pitchblende at a place called Shinkolobwe that was richer than anything previously known. The find was kept secret; the company set up a refining factory at Olen in Belgium and announced the production of the first gram of radium fr...

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Image: Alinda Friday | CC BY-SA 4.0

Katanga Province: The Secession

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick Hobgood from Cap-Haitien, Haiti, CC BY 2.0. When the Congo became independent in June 1960, Katanga contained most of the country's mineral wealth and most of its hard currency. Within weeks the provincial leader Moise Tshombe - backed by UMHK, the Belgian government, and Belgian troops - declared Katanga an independent st...

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Image: Nick Hobgood from Cap-Haitien, Haiti | CC BY 2.0

Katanga Province: Dissolution and Memory

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Havard Duclos, Bernard Marie Eugène. Auteur du texte, Public domain. The 2005 Congolese constitution specified that Katanga should be split. It finally happened on 16 July 2015 in a provincial assembly session in Lubumbashi, when Katanga was divided into Haut-Katanga, Lualaba, Haut-Lomami, and Tanganyika Provinces. Lubumbashi - the second-largest ...

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Image: Havard Duclos, Bernard Marie Eugène. Auteur du texte | Public domain