Lubumbashi & Katanga

The Upemba depression was home to the Kisalian culture, whose rich graves at Sanga, dating from around the 8th century onwards, contain copper jewellery and pottery. From these roots grew the Luba kingdom, which by the 17th century ruled the savannas of the north, and its offshoot, the Lunda empire, to the west. Copper from the south was smelted into cross-shaped ingots, used as currency across the region.

In the 1850s Msiri, a trader from what is now Tanzania, built the Yeke kingdom around Bunkeya on the copper and slave trades. He was killed in 1891 by an expedition sent by the Congo Free State, which then claimed Katanga. The Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, founded in 1906, developed copper mining, and Élisabethville, today's Lubumbashi, was founded in 1910 on the railway from Rhodesia. The Shinkolobwe mine near Likasi supplied much of the uranium used by the United States in the atomic bombs of 1945. Kalemie, as Albertville, was a base for the First World War campaign against German forces on Lake Tanganyika.

Days after independence, Moïse Tshombe declared Katanga's secession in July 1960, with Belgian support and mercenaries; Patrice Lumumba was murdered there in January 1961, and UN forces ended the secession in 1963. Under Mobutu the province was renamed Shaba, and rebels invading from Angola attacked it in 1977 and 1978, when French and Belgian paratroopers intervened at Kolwezi. The state mining company Gécamines collapsed in the 1990s, and the old province was divided into four in 2015.

Katanga has a strong regional identity, and many Katangese see their province as the engine of the country. A local form of Swahili, mixed with French and Luba words, is the everyday language of Lubumbashi and the mining towns, while Kiluba dominates the north, and Bemba, Lunda, Chokwe and Tabwa are spoken in their own areas.

Luba art is among the most admired in Africa: carved stools supported by kneeling female figures, headrests, and lukasa memory boards covered with beads and shells, used by court historians to recall genealogies and history. Lubumbashi is also the home of a school of popular painting that recorded the colonial past and independence in vivid canvases, and the city holds an art biennale.

Most people are Christian, with large Catholic and Protestant communities, and mining companies, churches and football clubs are pillars of city life. TP Mazembe, Lubumbashi's club, has won the African Champions League several times and is a source of great pride.

Lubumbashi, the second city of the country, has about two million people by recent estimates, and Kolwezi and Likasi are the other big Copperbelt towns. Kalemie and Kamina serve the north, which remains rural and poor, with farming, fishing and small trade.

The Copperbelt is the country's economic powerhouse. Large mines around Kolwezi and Tenke Fungurume, many run by Chinese and Western companies, produce copper and cobalt, and the DR Congo supplies most of the world's cobalt, a key metal in rechargeable batteries. Alongside them, tens of thousands of artisanal miners, including children, dig by hand in dangerous conditions, a practice that has drawn international scrutiny. Long convoys of trucks carry ore south through Zambia.

City days start early, with minibuses heading to mines and markets, and end with football and bars in the evening. Power cuts, the cost of living, land disputes around mines and the pollution of rivers and soils are everyday concerns.

The Katangese staple is a stiff maize porridge like the nshima of neighbouring Zambia, eaten with sauces of beans, greens or meat. Cassava leaves are stewed with palm oil or groundnuts, and sweet potatoes, pumpkin leaves and mushrooms from the miombo woodland appear in season.

Fish is central: dried small fish known as ndakala, and fresh fish from Lake Tanganyika, Lake Mweru and the Luapula and Lualaba rivers, grilled or stewed. Goat and chicken are grilled at roadside stalls, and caterpillars are gathered in the woodland after the rains.

Simba and Tembo beers are brewed in Lubumbashi, and home-brewed maize and sorghum beers are drunk in villages. Lubumbashi's supermarkets stock South African and Zambian produce, reflecting the city's ties to the south.

Lubumbashi's colonial centre has wide avenues, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, and a national museum with Luba and archaeological collections; the black slag heap of the Gécamines smelter looms over the city. The Copperbelt road leads through Likasi to Kolwezi, where the vast open-pit mines are the landscape.

North of Lubumbashi, the Kundelungu plateau is protected as a national park, and its Lofoi falls plunge an unbroken 340 metres in a narrow ribbon of water, among the largest waterfalls in Central Africa. Upemba National Park, created in 1939, covers plateaux and the Upemba depression, where the Lualaba spreads into lakes such as Upemba and Kisale and a maze of wetlands with papyrus, hippos and waterbirds; Sanga, the Kisalian burial site, lies nearby.

On the eastern edge of the region, Kalemie stands on Lake Tanganyika, the world's second-deepest lake, at the point where the Lukuga river flows out towards the Congo. It has beaches, fish markets and views across the lake to the Tanzanian mountains.