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David Mwape has spent 24 years working as a teacher in Kabwe, in central Zambia, where his students grow up in one of the planet\u2019s most polluted cities, exposed to a neurotoxin that can permanently damage their mental development and physical health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the playground, children in bright red uniforms shout, hula-hoop, and climb on a rusted slide less than half a mile from what was once one of the world\u2019s largest lead and zinc mines. The Broken Hill mine and smelter opened in 1906 and shut down in 1994, but the site was never properly cleaned up. Its estimated 6.4 million tons of lead-bearing waste continues to pollute the city today.<\/p>\n
From his classroom, Mwape sees firsthand how this contamination continues to shape the lives of Kabwe\u2019s youngest residents, 95 percent of whom have been documented to have blood lead levels far above what the World Health Organization says is safe. \u201cWe have children who are sick [with lead poisoning],\u201d he said. Sometimes students \u201cforget what the teacher is teaching,\u201d he added. \u201cSometimes they even sleep in class. Concentration is not good.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unless Zambia invests in environmental protection, a researcher says, the expansion of mining is \u201ca ticking bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, the United Nations described Kabwe as a \u201csacrifice zone,\u201d where roughly 300,000 people are exposed to dangerous levels of lead through the water they drink, the air they breathe, and the vegetables they eat. According to a 2025 Human Rights Watch \u00a0report, soil contamination in Kabwe is up to 300 times the level considered hazardous by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n
As Zambia pushes to develop its critical minerals, the southern African nation is haunted by the specter of Kabwe\u2019s deadly mining legacy. Fears of new environmental dangers were heightened last year when a tailings dam at a Chinese-operated copper mine in northern Zambia collapsed, releasing about 13 million gallons of toxic waste into a stream that runs into the Kafue, Zambia\u2019s longest river. The spill polluted waterways for roughly 60 miles downstream, killing fish and contaminating farmland with toxic heavy metals.<\/p>\n
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While mining is a vital part of Zambia\u2019s economy, the ongoing disasters of Kabwe and the tailings dam collapse have raised alarms just as the country is seeking to capitalize on the renewable energy transition by expanding mining of its critical minerals. Lawsuits have been filed and officials have promised investigations and tighter oversight, but critics say weak enforcement of environmental rules and repeated releases of toxins show the safety of communities and ecosystems still takes a back seat to economic growth.<\/p>\n
A school situated less than a mile from the shuttered Broken Hill mine in Kabwe.<\/span> More mining inevitably brings more pollution, said\u00a0Titus Haakonde, president of the\u00a0Zambia Institute of Environmental Health. Unless Zambia makes a matching investment in environmental protection and public health, he warned, the country is \u201con a ticking bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n Mining is the cornerstone of the Zambian economy, accounting for approximately 15 percent of the nation\u2019s GDP, 70 percent of its export earnings, and 44 percent of government revenues. With\u00a06 percent of the world\u2019s known copper reserves, as well as large deposits of cobalt, nickel, and manganese \u2014 all crucial for manufacturing electric vehicles, batteries, and renewable energy systems \u2014\u00a0the nation is poised to play a critical role in the global shift toward low-carbon technologies.<\/p>\n Zambia has already seen some gains from this transition: Copper export revenues jumped more than 30 percent in a single month\u00a0in 2025, while President Hakainde Hichilema\u2019s pro-business policies have recently attracted foreign investment in the country\u2019s mineral resources. In 2024, a United Arab Emirates-based company acquired a majority stake in Mopani Copper Mines, investing more than\u202f$1.1\u202fbillion to revive production. In 2025, Zambia signed a cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia to encourage investment in mineral exploration and production, and Canada\u2019s\u00a0Barrick Mining Corporation said it expected to double the Lumwana copper mine\u2019s annual production with a $2 billion investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n A breach in a tailings dam at a Sino-Metals copper mine near Kitwe, Zambia, in February 2025.<\/span> This week The New York Times\u00a0reported on a draft Trump Administration memo proposing that the U.S. withhold funding for Zambian health programs, including HIV treatment, unless that country gives U.S. businesses more access to its critical minerals.<\/p>\n U.S. push for Greenland\u2019s minerals faces harsh Arctic realities. Read more.<\/p>\n But foreign companies \u201care there to make profit,\u201d noted Mark Macklin, a professor of river systems and global change at the University of Lincoln in England. \u201cVery often the last things they are concerned with are the environment, ecosystem, and human health impacts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A 2023 study found that the social cost of lead poisoning in Kabwe, due to loss of IQ and lead-related mortality for children born between 2025 and 2049, could cost Zambia $224 to $593 million.<\/p>\n If lead levels in soil remain unchanged, said Alan Boobis, an emeritus professor of toxicology at\u00a0Imperial College London, the effects can persist for generations as the metal accumulates in bones and teeth, while lead stored in a mother\u2019s body can pass through the placenta to a developing fetus. Blood lead levels can be lowered with intravenous or oral binding agents and dietary supplements, he added, but treatment helps only if further exposure stops \u2014 and it cannot reverse damage already done.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShould mining expansion wait until we sort out the exposure we are dealing with?\u201d asks a children\u2019s advocate. \u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2025 Human Rights Watch report found that attempts to address Kabwe\u2019s contamination \u2014 including a government project funded\u00a0by a World Bank loan to test and treat children and clean up schools and some homes \u2014 have been undercut by ongoing mining and processing of mining waste. Companies have been licensed to remove material from waste dumps\u00a0and truck it to nearby sites for processing to extract the remaining lead and zinc. But the report said this activity has created new hazards: Dark, sandy piles of contaminated material, sometimes several meters high, have been left uncovered and unfenced along roads and near homes, with no warning signs indicating they contain lead.<\/p>\n Smaller-scale mining also takes place at multiple sites around Kabwe, where hard-pressed residents eke out a living by extracting lead and zinc from waste piles, often working with little or no protective equipment and exposing themselves to extreme health risks. Local businesses buy lead and zinc from these miners, and some have reportedly sold the metals directly to Chinese processing companies, according to Human Rights Watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n Juliane Kippenberg, associate children\u2019s rights director at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report, said Zambian officials were worsening pollution in Kabwe by continuing to issue licenses to mine and process lead waste. Zambia passed new mining\u00a0regulations in 2024 that were intended to ensure that licenses are granted only when companies meet environmental and health standards, but Kippenberg said that in Kabwe, additional processing was \u201cnot happening with environmental regulations at the forefront as a priority. Absolutely not.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n An artisanal miner pans for lead at the former Broken Hill mine in Kabwe.<\/span> Scrutiny of Zambia\u2019s mining industry only intensified last year when the tailings dam collapsed, releasing\u00a01.5 million tons of heavy metals into the Kafue River, killing fish, ruining crops, and prompting a shutdown of the water supply for Kitwe, a city of more than half a million people. Sino-Metals initially reported that only 50,000 tons of waste material had spilled, but an assessment by South Africa\u2019s Drizit Environmental said that it was 30 times that amount, and that the spill had created a \u201ctoxic environment capable of causing irreversible harm to both the ecosystem and human health.\u201d Sampling found dangerous levels of cyanide, arsenic, lead, and cadmium, which the report said posed long-term health risks including organ damage, birth defects, and cancer.<\/p>\n Collins Nzovu, Zambia\u2019s minister of water development and sanitation, described the Kafue spill as \u201ca serious environmental disaster that could have been avoided if proper safety measures were in place.\u201d The government ordered Sino-Metals to cease operations immediately after the spill, but it has reportedly approved the resumption of mining, raising concerns among residents about whether authorities can be trusted to protect communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bernard Njovu and his six children live and work on a farm in Kalusale, a village of 500 in one of the worst-affected areas. When the dam broke, acid poured into the nearby Chambishi stream, devastating his farm and poisoning his water supply. His family receives drinking water from Sino-Metals three times a week, but for bathing and washing, he says, \u201cwe use the same acid water, even washing our clothes, so we live with acid on a daily basis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Children in Kabwe are being treated for lead, then sent back to \u201cthe same contaminated environment,\u201d says a campaigner.<\/p>\n Titus Haakonde, of Zambia\u2019s Institute of Environmental Health, said the spill on the Kafue was an \u201ceye opener\u201d for the nation. \u201cWhen we talk about this massive and ambitious plan to increase the tonnage of copper production,\u201d he said, \u201cwe also need to invest massively in environmental health,\u201d including more health officers and better funding for equipment and technology.<\/p>\n Josphat Njobvu, executive director of Advocacy for Child Justice, a Zambian NGO, said that authorities needed to \u201cmake sure that there are health safeguards that are actually implemented. Should mining expansion wait until we sort out the issues and the exposure that we are dealing with? Of course.\u201d<\/p>\n In the aftermath of the Kafue spill, the government appears to have taken steps to tighten oversight of mining regulations that experts and officials say have been unevenly enforced. Last year, Zambia\u2019s Green Economy and Environment Minister ordered one company to suspend work in Copperbelt Province after inspections revealed that a tailings dam was placed, illegally, within 50 meters of a stream, and in Kabwe, local media reported that province and district officials had suspended operations at two Chinese-owned metal processing plants for violating environmental and health laws. After another tailings dam failure in Luapula Province, in November,\u00a0the minister said Mukabamo Copper Mines Limited would be held \u201cfully accountable,\u201d shouldering all the costs of rehabilitation under the \u201cPolluter Pays\u201d principle of Zambia\u2019s 2011 Environmental Management Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n Children walk past the Mopani copper mine in Kitwe.<\/span> Chrizoster Halwiindi Phiri, a member of Zambia\u2019s Parliament representing Kabwe, said conditions in the city had improved in recent years due to government interventions aimed at reducing exposure to lead. Schools in some of the worst-affected areas have been paved so children \u201cdo not play in the dust,\u201d she said, while new equipment has been introduced to test and treat tens of thousands of residents with high lead levels. \u201cIt is an ongoing public health crisis,\u201d she said, \u201cbut at least it\u2019s much better than it used to be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch\u2019s Kippenberg welcomes such efforts but noted that enforcement of Zambia\u2019s environmental and mining laws remains inconsistent. \u201cThere are some of the right policies and some of the right statements by the government,\u201d she said, \u201cbut we haven\u2019t seen any of these things get translated into practice.\u201d She noted that children in Kabwe were now tested and treated, then sent back to \u201cthe same contaminated environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This Zambian took on a U.K. mining giant on pollution and won. Read more.<\/p>\n Evans Kunda, 50, raised his three children in Makululu compound in Kabwe, one of Zambia\u2019s largest informal settlements, about a mile from the mine. His daughter, Beatrice, was diagnosed with lead-poisoning when she turned two in 2006, and he watched her struggle through school until she eventually dropped out in the ninth grade.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of families facing this problem,\u201d Kunda said. \u201cI wish we could start a new life away from here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David Mwape has spent 24 years working as a teacher in Kabwe, in central Zambia, where his students grow up in one of the planet\u2019s most polluted cities, exposed to a neurotoxin that can permanently damage their mental development and physical health.\u00a0 On the playground, children in bright red uniforms shout, hula-hoop, and climb on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[5526,2972,1094,362,2309,23903],"class_list":{"0":"post-47113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-legacy","9":"tag-looms","10":"tag-mining","11":"tag-pollution","12":"tag-pushes","13":"tag-zambia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Kennedy Phiri<\/span><\/p>\n
\n Richard Kille \/ AP Photo<\/span><\/p>\n
\n Tommy Trenchard \/ Panos<\/span><\/p>\n
\n Waldo Swiegers \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n