Zambia players train at Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, on August 6, 2025, for the 2024 Africa Nations Championship Group A match
Lubumbashi, DR Congo’s second largest city, is nearer to the capital cities of 14 African countries than it is to Kinshasa, DR Congo’s capital and largest metropolitan.
Of those 14 capital cities, Lusaka in Zambia is the one closest to Lubumbashi, with 549 kilometres separating the two cities. While Lubumbashi’s isolation from Kinshasa expresses DR Congo’s status as Africa’s second-largest country, its proximity to Lusaka forms the basis for explaining the close connection between Congolese and Zambian football.
It is a connection forged by the proliferation of mining activities in DR Congo’s Haute-Katanga Province and the adjoining Copperbelt Province in Zambia. The road from Lubumbashi to Lusaka passes through the Zambian mining towns of Chililabombwe, Chingola, and Kitwe while bypassing Mufulira and Ndola.
Zambia national team coach Avram Grant conducts a training session on August 6, 2025 at Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.
For slightly over a century, these towns and cities have bustled with football activity. In the 1920s, as Peter Alegi writes in African Soccerscapes: How a Continent Changed the World’s Game, “European mine managers encouraged African employees to form ethnic football teams as a way to boost production and as an inexpensive means of social control (division of workers along ethnic lines).”
However, it was in the 1960s and 1970s that most of the successful professional football teams in Zambia were founded. Unsurprisingly, a good number of them are based in Zambia’s Copperbelt region – Forest Rangers and Zesco United in Ndola, Nchanga Rangers in Chingola, Power Dynamos in Kitwe, and Mufulira Wanderers in its eponymous Zambian town. The mentioned clubs, either through sponsorship or origin, have a close association with Zambian corporate and government institutions that are involved in energy, forestry, and mining.
“Zambia is very mindful about football. Most of their teams are sponsored by corporates or government institutions,” former Gor Mahia secretary general, George Bwana, opined. Bwana is renowned for getting several Kenyan footballers to play for Zambian clubs, particularly those based in the Copperbelt Province. The players include Anthony Akumu, David “Calabar” Owino, Clifton Miheso, Jacob Keli, Jesse Were, and John Mark Makwata.
While facilitating those transfers, Bwana would make stopovers in Lubumbashi, the home of DR Congo’s most successful football club, Tout Puissant Mazembe, popularly known as TP Mazembe.
Describing DR Congo and Zambia as “big football nations”, Bwana attested to the strong cultural and economic ties between the people in DR Congo’s Haut-Katanga Province and Zambia’s Copperbelt region. “Lubumbashi and Ndola are like neighbours,” he said.
Still, it was not until 2009 that the connection became strongly pronounced in African football when DR Congo’s Leopards and Zambia’s Chipolopolo competed in the inaugural edition of the African Nations Championship (Chan) held in Cote d’Ivoire. DR Congo won the tournament after defeating Ghana 2-0 in the final while Zambia finished third, overcoming Senegal 2-1 in the play-off match.
Eleven of the 23 members of that victorious DR Congo squad played for TP Mazembe. Two other players played for AS New Soger, a team also based in Lubumbashi. Similarly, Zambia’s Chan 2009 squad had 11 players representing clubs located in the Copperbelt region.
DR Congo winning Chan 2009 heralded a golden age for Congolese football. Later that year, TP Mazembe won the 2009 CAF Champions League with two Zambians in the squad – Given Singuluma and Stopila Sunzu. Singuluma was the top scorer at Chan 2009 with five goals, signalling how fast TP Mazembe moved to sign him. Oddly, Singuluma and Sunzu joined the Congolese side from Zanaco, a Zambian team based in Lusaka. However, while Singuluma originated from Lusaka, Sunzu was born in Chililabombwe.
Still, TP Mazembe had laid the blueprint for their future success, conquests which were achieved with Zambian players in their squads. TP Mazembe went on to win two more CAF Champions League (in 2010 and 2015) and back-to-back CAF Confederations Cup titles in 2016 and 2017. TP Mazembe were also losing finalists to Inter Milan in the 2010 Fifa Club World Cup final.
DR Congo players pose for a group phot before their 2024 Chan Group 'A' match against Kenya at Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani in Nairobi, on August 3,2025.
Even when not playing together, DR Congo and Zambian players achieved more success with their national teams in the 2010s.
While Zambia won the African Cup of Nations for the first time in 2012, DR Congo became the first team to win the Chan twice following their success in 2016.
This era of DR Congo and Zambian football, influenced by the sports’ activities in the Haut-Katanga and the Copperbelt, would soon cause ripples in East African football.
To sustain the aura of the might and eccentricity projected by their name, TP Mazembe signed Tanzanian players Mbwana Samatta and Thomas Ulimwengu in 2011. With the help of the two players, and the Zambians Nathan Sinkala and Rainford Kalaba, TP Mazembe won the 2015 CAF Champions League, with Samatta finishing the season as the competition’s joint top scorer with seven goals.
That performance saw Samatta winning the CAF Africa-based Player of the Year Award for 2015. The achievement that saw him receiving a hero’s welcome when he landed in Dar es Salaam with the award and when he later left for Europe in 2016 to further his exploits, Samatta’s nickname, “Champion Boy”, remained in Tanzania as a lyric in Darassa’s vibrant song “Champion Boy niite Mbwana Samatta” -- “Champion Boy call me Mbwana Samatta”.
The Zambian league also had a vibrancy that appealed to George Bwana. “I wanted Kenyan players to experience a new football culture and Zambia appeared to me as the best place for them to further their career in that regard,” he said.
“The first move I worked on was David “Calabar” Owino’s move to Zesco. I am happy that he performed so well and opened doors for the other Kenyan players that I linked with moves there,” he added.
In Tanzania, the approach was different. The ambitious Simba SC and Yanga SC teams aimed to emulate TP Mazembe’s success model in the 2010s by also signing Congolese and Zambian players, and came agonizingly close to succeeding in that regard in the 2020s.
Yanga and Simba have played the CAF Confederations Cup final in the last two years, losing to USM Alger and RS Berkane in 2023 and 2025 respectively. The Tanzanian two clubs had Congolese and Zambian players in their squads during those unsuccessful attempts to lift a continental trophy.
Notably, mercurial Congolese striker Fiston Kalala Mayele scored one of Yanga’s goals in a 2-2 draw with USM Alger on the away goals rule in the 2023 CAF Confederations Cup final. Mayele finished that season as the competition’s top scorer with seven goals and was sold to Pyramids of Egypt for $800 000 (Sh100 million) in August of that year.
When Simba lost to Berkan 3-1 on aggregate in this year’s CAF Confederations Cup final, their goal was scored by Zambian forward Joshua Mutale.
During this period too, Yanga employed coaches from DR Congo and Zambia. Mwinyi Zahera, who exported the Congolese linguistic flair of mixing Kiswahili with English, French, and Lingala, had two spells coaching Yanga, from 2018 to 2019 and in 2021. He later returned to Tanzanian football to coach Coastal Union, Namungo, and Polisi.
DR Congo fans inside Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani on August 3, 2025, as they wait for kick-off of their Group 'A' match of the 2025 African Nations Championships against Harambee Stars.
Zambian George Lwandamina, who was born in Mufulira, arrived at Yanga in 2016 with a glittering coaching CV, having attended coaching courses in Germany and the Netherlands and coached the Zambian national football team and top clubs in the country, including Mufulira Wanderers.
The connection between DR Congo and Zambian football and their influence on the recent history of East African football is set to unfold with new meaning at Chan 2024. The two countries are set to clash today at the Nyayo National Stadium in a Group “A” fixture that will kick off at 4 pm. Other teams in the group are debutants and co-hosts Kenya, two-time champions Morocco, and 2011 runners-up Angola.
Their Chan 2024 squads still reflect the dominance of Haut-Katanga and Copperbelt clubs in DR Congo and Zambia, respectively. DR Congo’s squad has eight players who play for teams based in Lubumbashi, while Zambia’s squad has 13 players drawn from clubs based in their Copperbelt Province.
Zambia’s captain, Kabaso Chongo, who plays for Zesco United, best symbolises that connection between Congolese and Zambian football. The 33-year-old defender was born in Mufulira, a town located 19 kilometres from Zambia’s border with DR Congo. Chongo played for TP Mazembe for 10 years from 2014 to 2024, winning five league titles, a CAF Champions League (2015), and a CAF Confederations Cup (2016 and 2017).
The two countries will be meeting at Chan for the second time. Their first encounter was in the semi-final of 2009, which ended in a 2-1 victory for DR Congo.
