Petauke

Petauke is a town and the seat of Petauke District in the Eastern Province of Zambia, 400 kilometres east of Lusaka just off the Great East Road, the T4, which passes to the south of the town and joins Lusaka to Katete and Chipata. The main spoken language of its residents is Nsenga, and two local radio stations carry information up to 120 kilometres. The town stands in farming country producing maize, cotton, sunflower, groundnut and soya beans, with two cotton ginneries, a roofing industry, small maize mills and oil refiners, three breweries and sawmills. The region holds copper, amethyst and gold of low grade; gold was mined in the early seventeenth century, which fed a high rate of slave trade. A railway from Chipata through Petauke to Serenje was proposed in 2015.