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Bwana Mkubwa

human settlement in Zambia

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 28, 2025
Entity authorityQ5003663 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bwana Mkubwa (or Bwana M'kubwa; meaning "big chief"; or "great master") is a settlement and a mine in Copperbelt Province, Zambia. It is the oldest mine in Zambia's Copperbelt region. As a settlement with no municipal status, it became a locale due to the abundant copper deposits found in the area. Today, it is part of Ndola.

Etymology

Several versions of the origin of the name have been given. Mostly likely, William Collier and Jack Donohoe, who were led to the ancient workings, named the mining area "Bwana Mkubwa" after Francis Emilius Fletcher Jones, Native Commissioner, who was known to the locals as the 'Bwana Mkubwa'.

Geography

Bwana Mkubwa is located at the southern extension of the Zambian Copperbelt, east of the T3 Highway. The city centre of Ndola is 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) to the northwest. It is in the Bwana Mkubwa Protected Forest Area at an elevation of 1,373 metres (4,505 ft).

Politics

The town, together with most areas of Ndola south of the Kafubu River, is represented in the National Assembly by the Bwana Mkubwa constituency.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bwana Mkubwa” as human settlement in Zambia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 179-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1902. The account is most persuasive where Bwana, Mkubwa and human can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as human settlement in Zambia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5003663. VIAF identifies the subject as 132555570. The Library of Congress control number is n82242957. Authority coordinates are -12.983, 28.700. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bwana Mkubwa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.