Fungurume

Fungurume is a town in Lualaba Province in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 200 kilometres from Lubumbashi. Its economy is built mostly around copper and cobalt mining, the industries that define the wider Katanga mining belt of which it is a part. The population was recorded as 28,938 in 2008 and 34,104 in 2012, a rise of roughly a fifth in four years that reflects the pull of mining employment. The town is a working settlement rather than a long-established administrative or cultural centre, and the main reference sources say little beyond its location, its distance from Lubumbashi, its growth and its mines.