Lubumbashi is the 'other' great city of the Congo: the capital of the mining south, more orderly, calmer and with a better climate than bustling Kinshasa. Set on the Katanga savannah plateau, a stone's throw from Zambia, it was born just over a century ago around the copper mines and today is the heart of one of the richest mining regions in the world, key to the global supply of cobalt for batteries. Its main avenue, its art deco buildings and its jacarandas in bloom give it a character all its own.
Founded by the Belgians as Élisabethville in 1910, the city preserves remarkable colonial architecture —the Palace of Justice, the cathedral, the old Grand Hôtel— and a cultural life that is surprising for the deep Congo: the National Museum with thousands of pieces, contemporary art galleries, the renowned Lubumbashi Biennale and a passion for football centred on the legendary club TP Mazembe. It is a city of contrasts, where mining wealth coexists with huge inequalities.
This guide explores Lubumbashi with a practical eye: the museum and the colonial heritage, the zoo and the botanical garden, the cultural and football scene, the story of copper and cobalt, how to get around and where to sleep and eat. Safe, pleasant and with a personality of its own, Lubumbashi is one of the friendliest gateways to the DR Congo and to understanding the weight of Katanga in the country's history and economy.
Lubumbashi was born in 1910 as Élisabethville, founded by the Belgians next to the Katanga copper mines and named in honour of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. It grew alongside the powerful Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, which mined the region's copper and shaped the life of the city throughout the colonial era. It was the epicentre of the Katanga secession (1960-1963), the attempt —backed by Belgian mining interests— to separate the rich province from the newly independent Congo, a conflict linked to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Its full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The south of copper and cobalt: Katanga, the richest province in the country, source of the Manhattan Project's uranium and home to the city of Lubumbashi, with remote parks and the towering Lofoi Falls.
Read the history of The mining south (Katanga) →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Lubumbashi existed, the Katanga region was already famous for its copper. The peoples of southern Congo, among them the Luba, Lunda and Sanga, had worked the metal for centuries. They smelted copper in small furnaces and cast it into the famous 'Katanga crosses' (croisettes). These cross-shaped ingots served as currency and as a symbol of wealth and prestige across a vast regional trade. Copper metalwork was a deep-rooted and sophisticated tradition, and evidence of complex, well-organised societies.
Katanga was part of great African kingdoms and confederations, such as the Lunda empire and the Luba kingdoms. They controlled the trade in copper, salt, ivory and enslaved people between the heart of the continent and the Indian Ocean and Atlantic coasts. The region's mineral wealth was known and coveted long before Europeans arrived, and it laid the foundations for what came later.
When the European powers carved up Africa at the end of the 19th century, Katanga and its copper deposits ended up inside Leopold II's Congo Free State. The prospect of mining that mineral wealth on an industrial scale would change the region's fate for good and give rise to an entirely new city.
Lubumbashi was born in 1910 as a planned colonial city, founded by the Belgians next to the great copper deposits of southern Katanga. It was named Élisabethville, after Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, and designed from scratch as an administrative and mining centre. Its driving force was the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK). This powerful company would mine the copper, and later cobalt, uranium and other metals, and it dominated the city's economy and daily life throughout the colonial era.
Élisabethville grew fast and became one of the most prosperous and modern cities in the Belgian Congo. It had an orderly street plan, wide avenues, residential neighbourhoods for Europeans, art deco buildings, shops, a racecourse and cultural venues. The UMHK drew thousands of African workers to the mines and the city, where life was shaped by racial segregation and the harshness of mine work. As everywhere in the colony, wealth was shared out in a deeply unequal way.
Katanga's uranium also played a dark role in world history. Much of the uranium in the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 came from the Shinkolobwe mine, in this region. Élisabethville was a strategic hub of the global mineral economy, far more important than its size suggested.
When Congo won independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960, Katanga's wealth set off one of the most serious crises of African decolonisation almost at once. Just eleven days later, on 11 July 1960, the Katangese leader Moïse Tshombe proclaimed the secession of Katanga province in Élisabethville. He was backed by the Belgian mining interests of the Union Minière and by foreign mercenaries. The country's richest province was trying to break away from the young Congolese state and keep its mines.
The secession plunged Congo into chaos. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, a nationalist leader who wanted a united country, asked the UN for help and then the Soviet Union, which brought about his downfall at the height of the Cold War. After he was removed from office and arrested, Lumumba was flown in January 1961 to Katanga, of all places. There he was murdered with the complicity of the secessionist authorities, Belgian officials and Western intelligence services. His death, one of the most notorious political crimes of the 20th century, turned Lumumba into a martyr of pan-Africanism.
The Katanga secession lasted until 1963, when a UN military intervention put an end to it in one of the toughest peace operations in the organisation's history. Élisabethville was the epicentre of the conflict, with fighting in the city itself. The region returned to Congo, but the episode left a deep wound and shaped relations between the central government and rich, rebellious Katanga for decades.
After the secession ended and Mobutu Sese Seko consolidated his power from 1965 onwards, the city went through the changes of the Zaire era. Mobutu's policy of African 'authenticity' erased colonial names, and in 1966 Élisabethville was renamed Lubumbashi, after a nearby river. Katanga province was renamed Shaba for a time. The great mining company Union Minière was nationalised and turned into the state-owned Gécamines, which became the backbone of the country's economy.
During the Mobutu decades, Lubumbashi remained the country's second city and the heart of copper mining. But it suffered from Zaire's general economic decline, from corruption and from the decay of Gécamines. In 1990 the city saw a violent crackdown on students at the University of Lubumbashi, an episode that helped discredit the regime internationally. The region became a hotspot of political tension again in the turbulent final years of the dictatorship.
The Congo wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s hit Lubumbashi less hard than the east of the country. Even so, the city lived through the instability of those years and the collapse of much of its state mining industry. The fall of the Mobutu regime in 1997 and the rise to power of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, himself a Katangese, opened a new chapter for the city and the region.
In the 21st century, Lubumbashi has bounced back on the back of the global boom in Katanga's minerals. The province produces a large share of the world's copper and, above all, its cobalt, a metal essential to the batteries in phones, computers and electric cars. International mining companies from China, the West and elsewhere have poured money into the region. The city has filled up with businesses, hotels and an expat community tied to mining, and the pulse of the global battery economy can be felt in its streets.
That boom comes with huge contrasts and problems. Artisanal cobalt mining involves harsh working conditions and controversy over child labour, mining takes a toll on the environment, and there is a persistent gap between the wealth coming out of the ground and the poverty of much of the population. Lubumbashi mirrors the tensions of Congo and of the world economy: a city rich in resources where prosperity does not always reach everyone.
At the same time, Lubumbashi keeps a surprisingly lively cultural scene, with the National Museum, the Picha contemporary art Biennale and a passion for TP Mazembe. It also keeps its colonial art deco heritage and its jacarandas. Safe, orderly and with a character all its own, it is today one of the friendliest gateways to the DR Congo. The Belgians founded it as a copper city, and today it is the cobalt heart that keeps the world moving. Lubumbashi's story is Katanga's story: a land whose mineral wealth has shaped the fate of an entire country, for better and for worse.
