Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe… Africa and the minerals of tomorrow

The rich veins of Zambia’s north-western copper belt have long epitomised the unfulfilled promise of Africa’s vast mineral wealth.

At independence in 1964, the land-locked nation boasted one of the highest per capita incomes in Africa thanks to the global post-war construction boom. Yet rather than shared prosperity, the voracious appetite for the reddish-brown metal used in buildings, cars and telephone cables fuelled inefficiency and graft.

By the early 1990s, Zambia had become a cautionary tale that helped inspire British economist Richard Auty’s famous theory of the “resource curse.”