In 1961, an aeroplane carrying key United Nations figures, including the organisation's second Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, crashed on the outskirts of Ndola.

Once the largest industrial centre of Zambia, boasting, among many high-powered sites, company facilities including a Land Rover vehicle assembly plant, Dunlop Tire manufacture, Johnson & Johnson, and Unilever, Ndola's economy shrank significantly between 1980 and 2000.

Ndola has huge limestone reserves which are believed to be among the most homogeneous of their kind in the world[citation needed].

In 2008, the new holding company, Lafarge Cement Zambia, completed construction of a brand new plant at Chilanga which would produce about double the volume of Ndola Works.

By mid-2009, the new plant was still gathering momentum toward full production capacity, leaving Ndola still a significant player in the region's cement industry.

Nonetheless, the combination of huge limestone deposits and existing transport infrastructure passing through Ndola has kept the city a very attractive destination for investment into cement production and related activities.

[10] Freight rail lines run to other Copperbelt towns and from Ndola to Lubumbashi in DR Congo via Sakania.

[11][10] Ndola is on the T3 road, which connects to Kitwe in the north-west (as a dual carriageway) and to Kapiri Mposhi and Lusaka in the south.

[12] Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport, currently located 15 km west of the city centre (adjacent to the Dag Hammarskjöld Crash Site Memorial),[13] has scheduled domestic services to Lusaka and international services to Addis Ababa, Johannesburg and Nairobi.

About 10 km north-west of the city centre, there is a motor racing track popular with weekend motorbike enthusiasts.

[14] The city has several recreational green parks which enjoy a very basic level of maintenance and are open to the public.

Of particular significance is the Dag Hammarskjöld Crash Site Memorial located some 10 km west-north-west of Ndola city centre.

Dag Hammarskjöld Stadium, which was located on the banks of the Kafubu River south of the city, was razed in the 1980s.

Small reservoirs formed by dams on the Kafubu and Itawa streams flowing through the south-east of the city are used for boating and recreation.