Central Province

Central Province exists because the Great North Road exists—the colonial-era route that connected the Copperbelt to Livingstone (then the capital) had to cross somewhere, and Kabwe became that crossing. But Kabwe's origin predates roads: lead and zinc mining began there in 1902, making it Zambia's oldest mining town. The province sits on the Central African Plateau, a geography that makes it neither the mineral-rich north nor the agricultural south, but a transit zone linking both. Kabwe's Broken Hill Mine produced 'Kabwe Man,' a 300,000-year-old Homo heidelbergensis skull discovered in 1921 that reshaped understanding of human evolution. The same mine left a toxic legacy: lead contamination rates in Kabwe children rank among the world's highest, a present-day inheritance of early 20th century extraction that operated without environmental consideration. Central Province now focuses on commercial farming, producing maize, cotton, and tobacco in the railway corridor. Kapiri Mposhi serves as the junction where the Tazara railway—built by China in the 1970s to give landlocked Zambia an alternative to apartheid-era Rhodesian routes—meets the main line. That junction made Kapiri a logistics hub, and Chinese investment in 2025's railway upgrades reinforces this role. The province's GDP contribution remains modest, overshadowed by copper to the north and Lusaka's services to the south. By 2026, the Lobito Corridor extension could make Central Province a genuine logistics crossroads—or the railway investments may simply pass through on their way to more valuable destinations.