Ndola

Ndola is the third largest city in

History

What is now Ndola was first inhabited by the Lamba people led by Senior Chief Chiwala, the Lamba people migrated from the Luba-Lunda kingdom around 1600 and the town of Ndola was under Chief Mushili for some time but now it is under Chief Chiwala who came to the Lambaland during the slave trade from Malawi. The name Ndola is derived from the river, which originates in the Kaloko Hills and drains in the Kafubu River.^[1]

The town of Ndola was founded in 1904, by John Edward "Chiripula" Stephenson just six months after Livingstone, making it the second oldest colonial-era town of Zambia.^{[citation needed]} It was started as a boma and trading post, which laid its foundations as an administrative and trading centre today.

The

Ndola has a moderate humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cwa).

Industry

Legacy

Once the largest industrial centre of Zambia, boasting, among many high-powered sites, company facilities including a Land Rover vehicle assembly plant, Dunlop Tire manufacture, Johnson & Johnson, and Unilever, Ndola's economy shrank significantly between 1980 and 2000. Many closed factories and plants lie unoccupied in the town. A number of former industries such as clothing and vehicle assembly have disappeared completely.^[4] Even though the term 'ghost town' can no longer apply to it, Ndola is yet to regain its economic glory of pre-1980 days.

Refining

There are no

The Indeni Oil Refinery in Ndola supplies the whole country with refined petroleum. It was repaired in 2001 after being severely damaged by fire in 1999. GL Africa Energy, through its subsidiary Ndola Energy Company Limited, provides 105MW of power to the National Grid of Zambia. Power is generated from heavy fuel oil supplied by the Indeni Petroleum refinery.^[5][6]

Commercial

Ndola is home to one of the country's national newspapers, the Times of Zambia, as well as its printer, Printpak. These run as one company called TimesPrintpak. Catholic church run printing press, Mission Press, is also located in Ndola. Mission Press operates as a commercial entity.

Limestone

Ndola has huge limestone reserves which are believed to be among the most homogeneous of their kind in the world^{[citation needed]}. Limestone has therefore become to Ndola's economy what copper is to the rest of the country, providing much of the wealth and employment (Lime is a major component in the production of cement; a cement plant getting its lime from limestone and manufacturing a limestone cement will consume well over 80 kg limestone per 100 kg of cement produced).

Between 1974 and 2009, Ndola supplied over 50% of Zambia's cement from a plant located some 5 km south-east of the heart of the city. This plant was called Chilanga Cement, Ndola Works. The parent company then was Chilanga Cement plc. Chilanga Cement ran two plants in Zambia: one built in 1949 at Chilanga (hence the parent company name) and the other built in 1969 at Ndola. In 2008, the new holding company, Lafarge Cement Zambia, completed construction of a brand new plant at Chilanga which would produce about double the volume of Ndola Works. By mid-2009, the new plant was still gathering momentum toward full production capacity, leaving Ndola still a significant player in the region's cement industry. Nonetheless, the combination of huge limestone deposits and existing transport infrastructure passing through Ndola has kept the city a very attractive destination for investment into cement production and related activities.

A second

Another important processing plant that is based on limestone in the area is Ndola Lime. It is Zambia's sole producer of Lime^[citation needed]. Ndola Lime is located near the two cement manufacturing facilities. It supplies the mining industry as well as farmers who require agricultural lime. Ndola Lime company is wholly owned by ZCCM Investment Holdings, a parastatal holdings company via which Zambia's government maintains its active interest in the country's mining and closely related heavy industry.

Cultural interactions

The four processing plants (the cement plants, the lime plant and Bwana Mkubwa) have mining rights on land located very close to the traditional Chiefdom of Chiwala. Chief Chiwala is therefore a significant interested party to Ndola industry and economics.^{[citation needed]}

Electrical engineering

Egyptian company Elsewedy Electric joined a consortium of local companies led by ZESCO Ltd (Zambia's electricity supply authority), and established a transformer manufacturing plant and an electrical meter manufacturing plant in Zambia in 2008. Both these facilities are located about 5 km south of Ndola city centre.

Transport

The city is served by the operating sections of the

Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport, currently located 15 km west of the city centre (adjacent to the Dag Hammarskjöld Crash Site Memorial), has scheduled domestic services to Lusaka and international service to Addis Ababa, Johannesburg and Nairobi. It is one of the country's four international airports, others being Livingstone, Lusaka and Mfuwe.

The

Education

The Northrise University was founded in 2003.

The following are some of the education institutions found in Ndola:

Culture

The Copperbelt Museum, with a collection of gems and minerals from the Copperbelt.

Small reservoirs formed by dams on the Kafubu and Itawa streams flowing through the south-east of the city are used for boating and recreation.

The thermal power station which dominates the skyline near the railway station, built to power the mines and refineries, ceased operation in the 1960s when the Kariba Dam power station came on line.

National monuments

• The Slave Tree or Mukuyu Slave Tree around which Arab
  slave traders
  held slave markets in the nineteenth century (a mukuyu tree is a kind of fig tree). It has fallen due to "termites".
• plane crash on September 18, 1961 during the Congo Crisis
  .
• Lake Chilengwa 14 km E of Ndola at 12°58' S 28°45' E, was formed by the collapse of rock into an underlying
  cultural
  significance.

• Aldershot, England, United Kingdom
• Blantyre, Malawi
• Bentol, Liberia
• Porto, Portugal
• Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
• Makhachkala, Russia
• Harbin, Heilongjiang, China
• Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Walvis Bay, Namibia

See also

• Railway stations in Zambia
• Copperbelt Province
• Tug Agan Barracks

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ndola.

• Ndola travel guide from Wikivoyage