Komboni

A komboni is a type of informal housing compound or shanty town common to Zambia, particularly the capital city of Lusaka. It is characterized by a low income and a high population density. Kombonis typically began as housing for employees of a particular company, estate, or mine. An estimated 35% of Zambians live in urban areas, and kombonis exist in many of them. It is estimated that 80% of the population of Lusaka live and work in these areas. Northern Zambia is part of the Copperbelt, which is a region of Africa known for copper mining. Beginning in the late 1880s, the region was largely dependent on copper mining. The increasing development of copper mining led to rapid urbanization and industrialization from the 1920s through the 1950s. Many new towns such as Ndola, Kitwe, Chingola, Luanshya, Mufulira, and Bancroft sprung up in the Copperbelt, each of them associated with a different copper mine or smelter and consisting of a planned "garden city" for their white residents and compounds housing male African workers, who came to work on the mines, usually for a period of six months, before returning home to their villages. The compounds were similar to army barracks, and the workers (who generally only spoke their own languages) corrupted the word "Compound" into "Komboni". The mining towns were typically under the direct control of mining companies such as The Rhokana Corporation or Anglo-American, which provided social services and urban management. In many cases there were effectively "twin towns", one a mine town, such as Nkana, with the adjacent "civilian" town of Kitwe, lived in by people engaged in other occupations unrelated to the mines. With Independence in 1964, the mines were nationalised and came under the control of Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, ZCCM. The mines were subsequently re-privatized in 1997, beginning a series of changes to the structure and administration of those cities. Under ZCCM, houses were assigned to employees based on employee rank and family size.