Last week, Anshell Chibuye took a day off work as a turbine operator in one of the largest copper mines in the world - Zambia’s Konkola - to bury his 20-year-old nephew, who had died of malaria. Copper is used in everything from electrical wiring, phone and internet lines to computers and cars, and since Zambia’s copper mines were privatised at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the metal has quadrupled in value to about £4,000 per tonne. On behalf of the Zambian government, the London-based firms parcelled the mines and smelters, which were then losing £500,000 a week after years of underinvestment and low commodity prices, into seven entities. Zambia’s mines are now owned by the likes of Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, Glencore International, the firm founded by controversial American commodity trader Marc Rich, and Vedanta Resources, the UK-quoted mining firm run by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal. Stung by being virtually wiped out in Zambia’s Copperbelt region in last year’s elections, Mwanawasa has forced mining firms to the renegotiation table. Professor John Lungu, a respected academic at Zambia’s Copperbelt University, says the World Bank told the government that some of the mines to be sold had just seven years of life in them. read more

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