[3] The mine's name is said to have been given by William Collier, a prospector and explorer, who shot and killed a roan antelope in 1902 beside the Luanshya River.

[7] Development of Roan Antelope, Rietbok and Bwana Mkubwa was abandoned when better quality ore was discovered nearby in Katanga and the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) began producing large volumes of copper at low prices.

[7] A. Chester Beatty, founder and owner of Selection Trust, obtained the option of taking over the Roan and Rietbok concessions until 31 March 1926.

[9] He engaged the engineer Russell J. Parker, who arrived in the area in September 1925, and inspected the former Rhodesia Copper Company workings.

[a][11] Parker sank two deeper center shafts, with additional cross-cuts, and his samples seemed to indicate a copper sulfide deposit.

[12] The mine experienced a high death rate between 1927 and 1930, making it hard to hire both African and European miners.

[2] In 1929 the managers of the mining company in London arranged for the Ross Institute for Tropical Diseases to send an expedition led by William John Ritchie Simpson to find what was causing the deaths.

The work included building culverts and road bridges, filling holes, draining marshes and making the channels of the Luanshya River and other streams deeper and straighter.

At the same time latrines were built, garbage removed, the hospital was cleaned regularly and a laboratory was established.

[17] The mining company did not wait for an official government survey, but started to build the planned town of Luanshya immediately.

After 1929 they were moved to baked brick houses with corrugated iron roofs and concrete floors, supposedly mosquito-proof, while the rondavels were assigned to African married couples.

[18] In 1931 the manager set up a Tribal Elders Council to settle disputes according to customary law, which had the side effect of making the miners feel independent of European authority.

[20] In late May 1935 a crowd of striking Bemba miners gathered outside the offices of the Roan Antelope copper mine.

The governor, Hubert Winthrop Young formed a commission led by William Alison Russell to report on the reason for the disturbances.

[25] It lasted 21 days, until management accepted arbitration, through which the workers gained solid increases in pay.

These men had to leave the AMWU and join the Mines African Staff Association (MASA), whose members could not strike.

It was privatized in 1997 and became the property of the Roan Antelope Mining Corporation of Zambia, owned by a group based in India.

The mine was flooded in 2001 when heavy rains caused the Luanshya dam to overflow, and was officially closed.