This presentation examines the practices and perspectives of urban planners in Zambia's Copperbelt during a period of mining resurgence driven by the demand for critical minerals. It also considers the challenges and opportunities they face. This aligns with efforts by resource-rich African nations, such as Zambia, to develop an industrial manufacturing sector focused on these minerals. Notably, there is a joint understanding with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a major producer of copper and cobalt, to create a regional battery minerals value chain. The presentation draws on semi-structured interviews with officials from municipal authorities and regional institutions in Copperbelt towns like Chililabombwe, Chingola, Kalulushi, Kitwe, Luanshya, Ndola, and Mufulira, as well as ethnographic observations and informal interviews. It explores how urban planners manage land for mining and industrial purposes, as well as to meet the needs of Copperbelt residents seeking land for agriculture, housing, and infrastructure, especially as residents increasingly are expected to meet these needs themselves. It also examines how they address environmental issues and promote regional development, not only within the Copperbelt but also along transboundary transport links, such as the proposed Lobito corridor, which would connect the region to Angola’s Atlantic coast, and the Tanzania-Zambia railway to the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. This connects planners' work to African trade integration and the geopolitical interests of the USA and China. The presentation highlights a gap in urban governance studies in Africa, particularly regarding extensive research on the Zambian Copperbelt. While such research has enriched our understanding of civic engagement, life in mining towns, and mining-driven urbanisation, it has less systematically examined the practices and viewpoints of city officials and administrators. It underscores the vital yet often overlooked role of practitioners in implementing industrial policies and regional development, emphasising the importance of technical expertise and cross-sector collaboration, and how these elements interact at the intersection of local and global politics.

Patience Mususa is an environmental anthropologist with a background in architecture, development practice, and anthropology specialising in mining and human settlement and working at the intersections of research, policy and practice. In her research on the Zambian Copperbelt she discusses copper mining towns, planning and urbanization, and community welfare. Mususa earned her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. Today, she is a senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala. She is the author of There Used to Be Order. Life on the Copperbelt after the Privatisation of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines.