In mid-May, when 43-year-old Nkhoma Blessings, a cost control officer at Zambia’s Chambishi Copper Mine, opened his Google browser, a recommended World Cup-style music video immediately caught his eye. Curious, he clicked the link — only to sit back in stunned delight: the upbeat, stadium-filling anthem blasting from his speakers was created by his own colleagues, performed by a band of fellow mine employees.
Blessings was far from the only person caught off guard by the song’s sudden viral success. Katongo Chipasha, a logistics worker at the mine and the track’s lead vocalist, received an ecstatic phone call from her brother, who had stumbled across the video on YouTube and could barely contain his excitement. “That was an amazing feeling. I am doing something that brings people together,” Chipasha said of the moment.
Released in early May at a company ceremony marking the launch of a new tunnel boring machine (TBM), the self-titled *Chambishi Copper Mine* anthem quickly spread across global social media platforms, racking up hundreds of thousands of likes from listeners drawn to its infectious, high-energy rhythm. Online fans even rebranded it as a playful unofficial World Cup anthem, reworking its chorus to the catchy line “Championship Will Be Mine”.
At the heart of this online sensation is the NFCA Band, a 20-member group made up entirely of non-professional musicians who work across every department of the mine, from heavy-duty underground miners to office-based administrative staff. NFCA, short for NFC Africa Mining Plc, is a China-Zambia joint venture that operates the Chambishi site, founded in 1998 as China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group’s first overseas nonferrous metal investment. The band was formed in 2025, with the company covering all costs for instruments including bass guitars, keyboards and drums to support workers’ shared passion for music.
The idea for the anthem came to NFCA Deputy Manager Xu Laixiang, a self-described lifelong music fan, while he was in his staff dormitory on site. “I looked at the long history of this mine and thought, ‘Why not write our own anthem?’” Xu recalled. With assistance from an AI tool for lyric drafting and arrangement, he composed the track on his office desk, blending the mine’s decades-long legacy with traditional African rhythmic motifs to create a sound that felt both personal and broadly resonant. Originally created only for the TBM commissioning ceremony, the track’s explosive viral success was entirely unanticipated.
The song’s popularity extends far beyond social media, earning acclaim as a powerful grassroots symbol of China-Zambia cooperation. Zambia’s Ambassador to China Ivan Zyuulu praised the track at a recent cultural event, calling it “danceable and engaging” and a powerful testament to collaborative mining partnership and people-to-people exchange between the two nations. “Chinese and Zambian workers worked together to produce the song, which is very informative and encouraging, reflecting the spirit of people-to-people exchanges between China and Africa,” he said.
The anthem’s lyrics carry deep meaning rooted in the mine’s own journey from abandonment to revival: “Chambishi Copper Mine, rise again, rise again; Chambishi Copper Mine, we build, we bend, we mend. Chambishi Copper Mine, from the dark to the shine …” For Stephen Ndegwa, executive director of African think tank South-South Dialogues, these lines strike a profound emotional chord that reflects lived experience, not just rhetoric.
“When Zambian workers sing about rising again, they are singing their own history. These are the lived experiences of workers who have watched a dormant mine come back to life through their own sweat and cooperation,” Ndegwa explained.
Chambishi’s story is one of dramatic transformation. First discovered in the late 19th century, the mine was abandoned by Western operators decades ago, after they pulled out due to insurmountable technical challenges and financial struggles. In the years that followed, equipment rusted away, thousands of local miners lost their jobs, and hope faded across surrounding communities.
The turning point came in 1998, when China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group acquired the idle site. After five years of rehabilitation work, the silent tunnels roared back to life in 2003, when the mine produced its first batch of copper concentrate following its restart. Today, Chambishi is a global leader in innovative mining, and the recent launch of Africa’s first ultra-small turning-radius TBM for underground mining marked a major milestone for Zambia’s entire mining sector.
Zambian Minister of Mines and Minerals Development Paul Kabuswe noted at the TBM launch ceremony that the new technology represents a critical step forward for Zambia’s goal of building an “intelligent and green” mining industry. The advanced equipment, custom-built for Chambishi’s geological conditions, has an excavation diameter of 5.63 meters and a minimum turning radius of 50 meters, operating three times more efficiently than traditional drill-and-blast excavation methods. The technology is core to Zambia’s national target of producing 3 million metric tons of copper by 2031, while also improving local livelihoods and driving broad economic growth.
Chambishi is now the site of Africa’s first fully digital intelligent mine, developed through China-Zambia collaboration. Remote control systems, real-time smart monitoring, and automated safety warning technologies have been fully deployed, cutting down on high-intensity, high-risk manual labor and revolutionizing traditional mining operations through Chinese technical expertise.
For local workers, the mine’s revival has transformed personal as well as economic prospects. More than 6,000 jobs have been created at Chambishi, with over 90 percent of the workforce drawn from local Zambian communities. Runny Kaunda, a 30-something housekeeper who has worked at NFCA for two years and is one of the band’s lead vocalists, says the mine pulled her out of hardship. “There is a line in the lyrics that encourages me — ‘there are some scars that turn into sweets’. Before I joined NFCA, my life was difficult. After joining NFCA, my life has improved,” she said.
Daniel Mukulumoya, a 38-year-old materials coordinator with seven years at the company, says the line “we build, we bend, we mend” echoes both his professional work and personal journey. The song, he argues, is far more than a mining anthem: “It shows how NFCA’s copper production has transformed lives, not just inside the mine, but also in surrounding communities.”
That community impact extends well beyond job creation. NFCA has invested heavily in local social infrastructure, supporting local schools with supplies, assisting orphanages and medical facilities, and upgrading public services. In late May, new sanitation facilities donated by the company were commissioned for the Fitanda community, and recent corporate social responsibility projects include a new girls’ dormitory for a local boarding school, new classrooms for a primary school, and a new water well for a secondary school. Local community representative Bertha Mulenga noted that the company has built housing, churches, schools and clinics across the region, and addressed chronic local water shortages by drilling new wells, installing pumping infrastructure, and providing fuel to guarantee consistent daily water access.
The Chambishi investment has also catalyzed broader regional development: it helped lay the foundation for the Zambia-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone, China’s first overseas economic and cooperation zone in Africa. According to Zambia’s *Daily Nation*, by 2025 the zone had attracted more than $2.7 billion in total investment, hosted nearly 100 enterprises, and created more than 10,000 local jobs. Ndegwa notes that the “anchor investment” model pioneered at Chambishi has been replicated across the African continent, from Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway, which revolutionized freight logistics and created thousands of engineering jobs, to Nigeria’s Lekki Deep Sea Port, which is reshaping regional trade routes.
Ndegwa pushed back against Western narratives that frame Chinese investment in Africa as a form of neocolonialism, arguing that the colonial model was defined by extractivism and inequality, where foreign powers pulled resources out while leaving local communities marginalized and excluded. “The viral song performed by proud, joyful Zambian workers is human testimony that carries a different kind of persuasive force,” he said.
For Xu, the most meaningful moment of the entire experience was watching Zambian workers dance and sing along to the anthem he composed. It was, he said, the most profound experience he has had of the shared future that binds China and Africa together, rooted in daily grassroots cooperation rather than formal diplomacy. Local worker Blessings Kamanga, a 30-year-old mechanical fitter and amateur singer, says he feels lucky to work at a mine that supports workers’ creative passions — even singing verses of the anthem during underground breaks, where the tunnel’s natural acoustics create the perfect backing echo.
“Development that does not produce human connection remains fragile. Cooperation that produces a band of miners singing proudly about their workplace is cooperation with roots. It cannot easily be disrupted by geopolitical winds or hostile media narratives, because it lives in people’s memories and identities,” Ndegwa said.
2026 marks a landmark year for China-Africa relations: it is the China-Africa Year of People-to-People Exchanges, and the 70th anniversary of formal China-Africa diplomatic relations. Over seven decades, formal diplomatic ties have built the framework for cooperation, investment and infrastructure development across the continent. For the NFCA Band, the viral success of their anthem has brought an exciting new opportunity: the group has been invited to perform on a Chinese television program later this year, with many members set to visit China for the first time.
Ndegwa summed up the deeper meaning of the Chambishi story: “The Chambishi song reveals that beneath that scaffolding, something more intimate has been quietly growing — a genuine mutual curiosity and respect between ordinary people on both sides, and a durable bond built not only in conference rooms, but also in shared daily experience. That is the lesson Chambishi offers at 70 years.”
