Kolwezi

About Kolwezi

Kolwezi or Kolwesi is the capital city of Lualaba Province in the south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, west of Likasi. It has an airport and a railway to Lubumbashi. Just outside of Kolwezi there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Inga-Shaba. The population is approximately 573,000.

Before the creation of Lualaba province in 2015, Kolwezi had two territories attached to it to create the Kolwezi District.

The general area of Kolwezi was once known as Keshila. It was conquered by Xind and Konokesh, two agents of Yavu a Newej who were over the eastern expansion of the Lunda Empire in the 1730s or so.

The settlement was created in 1938 to be the headquarters for the western mining group of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga. In 1971 it obtained city status and consisted of the communes of Dilala and Manika. In 1976 the territories of Lubudi and Mutshatsha, both previously part of Lualaba District, were attached to it to form the Kolwezi District (districts were called sub-regions at the time). In the 2015 repartitioning this was undone, the two territories and the city proper became separate parts of Lualaba province with the city as capital of the new...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.