Copper mining in Katanga dates back over 1,000 years, and mines in the region were producing standard-sized
ingots of copper for international transport by the end of the 10th century CE. In the 1890s, the province was beleaguered from the south by
Cecil Rhodes'
Northern Rhodesia, and from the north by the
Belgian Congo, the personal possession of King
Leopold II of Belgium.
Msiri, the King of the
Yeke Kingdom, held out against both, but eventually Katanga was subsumed by the Belgian Congo. After 1900, the
Societe Generale de Belgique practically controlled all of the mining in the province through
Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK). This included
uranium,
radium, copper,
cobalt,
zinc,
cadmium,
germanium,
manganese,
silver,
gold, and
tin. In 1915, a deposit of
pitchblende and other uranium minerals of a higher grade than had ever been found before anywhere in the world and higher than any found since were discovered at
Shinkolobwe. The discovery was kept secret by UMHK. After
World War I ended a factory was built at
Olen; the secrecy was lifted at the end of 1922 with the announcement of the production of the first gram of radium from the pitchblende. By the start of
World War II, the mining companies "constituted a state within the
Belgian Congo". The
Shinkolobwe mine near
Jadotville (now
Likasi) was at the centre of the
Manhattan Project. and the
Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from
Shinkolobwe mine. In 1960, after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then called Republic of the Congo) gained independence from Belgium, the UMHK,
Moise Tshombe and
Godefroid Munongo supported the
secession of Katanga province from the Congo. This was supported by Belgium but opposed by the Congolese Prime Minister
Patrice Lumumba. This led to the assassination of Lumumba and the
Katanga Crisis (or "Congo Crisis"), which lasted from 1960 to 1965. The breakaway
State of Katanga existed from 1960 to 1963, then was reintegrated. In 2005, the new constitution specified that Katanga was to be split up into separately administered provinces. Militias such as
Mai Mai Kata Katanga led by
Gédéon Kyungu Mutanga fought for Katanga to secede, and his group briefly took over the provincial capital
Lubumbashi in 2013. The province officially ended on 16 July 2015, during a session of its provincial assembly. ==Economy==