Chingola

Chingola is a town in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia, the country's copper-mining region, with a population of 256,560 at the 2022 census. It grew around the Nchanga copper mine, a deep-shaft, high-grade operation that in the 1960s was joined by the Chingola open pit and then the Nchanga open pit, the latter described as the second largest open-cast mine in the world. The town was founded in 1943, somewhat later than most other Copperbelt towns, to service the newly opened Nchanga mine. A freight-only branch of Zambian Railways links it to Kitwe, and it lies on the Copperbelt Highway, the T3 road, which runs north to Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and south-east to Kapiri Mposhi, and at the start of the T5 road toward Solwezi and the Angolan border. Kasompe Airport serves the town.