Copperbelt University
The Copperbelt needed its own university. That was the argument the Zambian parliament accepted when it passed Act No. 19 in 1987 and created the Copperbelt University. Until then, the country's engineers, planners, and mining professionals had been trained either abroad or at the University of Zambia in Lusaka, 350 kilometers south of the actual Copperbelt. Kitwe - the heart of Zambia's copper country - had been running a UNZA satellite campus since the 1970s, known formally as the University of Zambia at Ndola and informally as UNZANDO. The Act of Parliament simply recognized what had already become true: the Copperbelt had earned a university of its own.
Where the Engineers Come From
CBU now has the biggest school of engineering in Zambia, and the range is specific to the country's economic needs. The undergraduate offerings read like a map of what the Copperbelt requires: civil, mechanical, electrical, electronics, telecommunications, mechatronics, aeronautical, electromechanical, and railway engineering. That last one matters - the TAZARA railway, linking Zambia to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam, is a lifeline for landlocked exports, and the engineers who maintain it need specific training. CBU was the first institution in southern Africa to offer a mechatronics degree, the hybrid of mechanical and electronic engineering that modern mining operations increasingly demand. The chemical engineering program runs through the School of Mines and Mineral Sciences. Taken together, the engineering faculty produces the technical backbone of the nation's extractive economy.
Buildings, Real Estate, Planning
Alongside engineering, the university built out the largest School of the Built Environment in Zambia. The programs - architecture, real estate, urban and regional planning, construction economics, quantity surveying - address a country urbanizing faster than its infrastructure can follow. Zambia's cities have grown without enough trained planners, and CBU's graduates are meant to fix that. The School of Medicine opened its doors more recently, a significant addition for a country with severe shortages of trained physicians. In 2014 the school received a US$1 million donation from the Council of Zambian Jewry via the African Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress - a reminder that Zambia has had a small but significant Jewish community, much of it connected historically to the copper trade and business life in Lusaka and the Copperbelt.
Five Campuses, One University
CBU is not a single campus. The Riverside Main Campus on Jambo Drive in Kitwe is the administrative and academic center, but the university also operates Parklands Campus, a Ndola campus, Kapasa Makasa Campus in Muchinga Province's Chinsali, and a TAZARA Campus dedicated to railway, mechanical, and electromechanical engineering. This distributed model reflects a recurring truth about Zambian higher education - demand outstrips infrastructure. Roughly 15,900 students attend across these sites, and the university graduates about 1,500 per year. At the first graduation ceremony in 1992, there were 100 graduates. Over the past twenty-five years, more than 54,000 people have earned CBU degrees.
The Dag Hammarskjöld Chair
One of the university's named academic positions is the Dag Hammarskjöld Chair for Peace, Human Rights and Conflict Management - an unusual honor for a university focused heavily on engineering and the built environment. The chair recognizes that the UN Secretary-General died in a plane crash just 30 kilometers east of CBU's main Kitwe campus, near Ndola, on the night of 17-18 September 1961. Hammarskjöld was en route to negotiate a ceasefire in the Katanga secession crisis. His crash site is a national monument; the university's chair extends his legacy into the realm of peace and conflict scholarship, grounding that mission in the country where he died.
The Graduates You'll Hear About
Two of Zambia's recent Finance Ministers graduated from CBU - Felix C. Mutati and Margaret Mhango Mwanakatwe - which says something about the pipeline from Copperbelt to Cabinet. Alan Kabanshi built his career as an engineer and researcher, part of the technical professional class the university was designed to produce. CBU is a signatory to the Southern African Development Community Protocol on Higher Education, a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the Association of African Universities. The place operates in English, as does most of Zambian higher education, and the standard is intentionally comparable to universities elsewhere in the Commonwealth. What makes CBU distinct is not its ranking or its research prestige - both are modest by global standards - but its specific role in the national economy. If your goal is to know how to build a copper mine, plan a Zambian city, repair a TAZARA locomotive, or design a suspension bridge across the Luangwa, the Copperbelt University is where you go to learn.
From the Air
Located at 12.81°S, 28.24°E in Kitwe, Zambia, at approximately 1,230 meters elevation. The nearest airport is Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport (NLA) at Ndola, about 30 nautical miles to the southeast; Kitwe's own Southdowns Airport is a smaller facility. From the air the main Riverside Campus is visible as a cluster of academic buildings and sports fields on Jambo Drive, west of central Kitwe and near the edge of the Kafue River catchment. The surrounding landscape is classic Copperbelt - mining infrastructure visible at the edges of every major town, with open pit and tailings features showing clearly from altitude. The climate is subtropical, with distinct wet (November-April) and dry (May-October) seasons. Good VFR flying in the dry months; afternoon convection during the wet season.