Expanded Mining Brings Increased Economic Opportunities
Visualize a mine in Zambia and the image of conveyor belts towering over the ore bodies, massive trucks transporting minerals, and workers in protective gear descending into pits comes to mind.
At a glance, a mining site may appear as a seamless and coordinated dance, with each component functioning effortlessly and precisely, executing its part at the right moment.
But behind the scenes, other groups of people play completely different – perhaps seemingly unrelated – roles, each of which is also integral to these mines’ smooth running. Somebody is sewing the workwear that protects these miners.
somebody else is changing the tires of the truck that needs to carry 200 passenger cars’ worth of ore down a road that yet another somebody levelled in the ground.
The lunches that people eat on site are cooked by another person; perhaps he or she has always dreamed of having a small catering business.
Somebody had to grow the vegetables and maize that were used to cook these lunches, and they had to be transported from Lusaka or Kitwe or Kalumbila by a different person, in a vehicle that may be one in a growing fleet.
Barbers and butchers and banks gravitate to set up shop and serve new markets of new employees, when jobs are created in a mine. Every one of these people is a vital cog in the enormous wheel that is mining in Zambia.
Wherever you are in the vast and interconnected network that is mining, take a moment to think about this chain reaction, in which one job multiplies and multiplies again further down the line.
