
Water tanks replacement at Kamuchanga District Hospital, with FOM’s support
FOM work never so vital
At the end of April our first elective of 2024, a medical student from the University of Edinburgh, travels to Mufulira in Zambia. She will arrive in a mining town much changed from 2000-2020.
In all that time, despite the hard deal that Glencore drove at the turn of the century, each year had shown improvements in the life of the town, and every year investment in the smelter and mine complex was visible for all to see. Auxiliary businesses grew, those not involved directly with the mine still benefited from better schools, roads, and health provision – even though most of it was despite rather than because of any government involvement.
Today, Zambia as a whole, and Mufulira specifically, faces a drastically different situation. As I write, Southern Province, the area south of Lusaka and down to Livingstone, has had no rain for two months. That is, no rain in the two months that are normally the rainy season. Weather patterns have been unpredictable. Crops planted opportunistically in damp weather have been first drenched and then scorched. The Kariba Dam is at its lowest levels for years. The underground waters that supply the Kafue and Zambezi Rivers are drying up. Local people are now speaking of the prospect of famine.
In the Copperbelt Province two dams are being built — one in Chingola by a UK company with some EU support, an-other in Mufulira. Neither are finished. Water flows here for a maximum of two hours per day.
What is so important to understand is the extent to which communities rely on active mining for the water they drink. Mufulira relies on water pumped from the Mopani mine for 70% of its drinking water. But the Mulenga Water Company struggles to process and operate being under-funded and poorly run.
Amongst all this, the extraordinary recent sale of Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) to a United Arab Emirates entity with no record of copper mining has added political turmoil where none was needed. Other fully-fledged mining companies had performed due diligence and were on an official list before being effectively gazumped when a sale was announced without process while Zambia’s President Hichilema was at COP28 in UAE. A deeply ironic fact that, at a conference to discuss climate change, the country suffering from climate change should also be short-changed on a major sale of its assets.
But hope comes even where water doesn’t — our links with Mufulira mean we know what is going on. Local people tell me that better management of water is possible, and a water storage project, if completed by end April, will increase water flow from 2 to 8 hours per day.
Meantime Friends of Mufulira is closely working with Ronald Ross General Hospital on a project to refurbish the hospital’s labour ward. Final detailed quotations have just come in, and I hope I will be able to report real progress in my next update. FOM has never been more important to the people of Mufulira in keeping hopes alive at a difficult time. As always, I think every single member of the MMTA for their support.
By Anthony Lipmann
Charity Trustee, Friends of Mufulira
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