Komboni

A komboni is a type of informal housing compound or shanty town common to Zambia, particularly the capital city of Lusaka.

[1]: 66  Many new towns such as Ndola, Kitwe, Chingola, Luanshya, Mufulira, and Bancroft sprung up in the Copperbelt, each of them associated with a different copper mine or smelter and consisting of a planned "garden city" for their white residents and compounds housing male African workers, who came to work on the mines, usually for a period of six months, before returning home to their villages.

[4] After privatization of the mines, employees were offered the homes they were occupying at subsidized prices which were deducted from their severance packages.

[5] Lusaka has been considered a poorly planned city, which grew slowly and in ways its planners failed to anticipate.

[6]: 48  The vast majority of this increase in population happened in informal, unauthorized areas, on land that had been designated as belonging to white-owned commercial farms or industries.

[1]: 71 Because the compounds were on land belonging to white owners or businesses on which their employees were permitted to live, many of the kombonis are named after their colonial owners or the business they ran, leading to names like John Howard, Misisi (meaning The Mrs.), and Ng'ombe (meaning cows, because the area was used as a cow pasture).

[2] Kombonis in Lusaka include neighborhoods like Garden Compound, which sprang up in the planned outflow area from the city's sewage treatment plant, and Misisi, which is very difficult to get to because of a lack of roads, and is surrounded by piles of rotting garbage.

[1]: 80 Lusaka was originally intended to be a garden city, with many trees planted in the planned white neighborhoods.

[1] The city government has made sporadic efforts to maintain a garden atmosphere and to extend it to the kombonis, but with limited effect.

[1]: 77 Kombonis tend to be cut off from pedestrian routes through wealthier areas, and distant from good roads.

[6]: 53  As is common in slums and ghettos worldwide, a new road network planned to encircle Lusaka will likely displace residents in many kombonis and bifurcate communities.

[1]: 79 Kombonis tend to have relatively few industries or formal businesses located within them, leading residents to depend on an informal economy or commute for their livelihoods.

"[7] Komboni Radio does this by using street language, which is a mix of English, Nyanja and Bemba, and by offering the lowest advertising rates in the industry.