Likasi

About Likasi

Likasi (formerly official names: Jadotville (French) and Jadotstad (Dutch)) is a city in Haut-Katanga Province, in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Likasi has a population of around 635,000 (2015). During the 1990s the United Nations set up feeding centres and refugee centres in and around Likasi to assist with the refugees fleeing ethnic violence in Shaba, whose arrival had increased the population of the town some 41,000.

Shinkolobwe mine, 20 km west of Likasi (then called Jadotville), was described by a 1943 Manhattan Project intelligence report as the most important deposit of uranium yet discovered in the world. The uranium from this mine was used to build the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

In 1961, during the United Nations intervention in the Katanga conflict, a company of Irish UN troops deployed to Jadotville fought valiantly, but was besieged and eventually surrendered to troops loyal to the Katangese Prime Minister Moïse Tshombe.

Likasi remains a centre for industry, especially mining, and is a transport hub for the surrounding region. There are mines and refineries supplied by nearby...

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