Handvik Investment Limited started as a small business with just one employee in 2009. Today, the Zambian-owned company is a major contractor with over 300 employees.
The company’s big break came in 2011 when it registered as a supplier to Kansanshi, when the mine was looking for vehicle hire services. “We seized that opportunity and delivered a reliable service, which helped us build trust,” said Director Manager at Handvik Investment Limited, Mr Victor Muyelu.
Zambia became the latest African country to implement local content regulations in the mining sector from 1 January 2026. But ultimately, Handvic’s success comes down to standing on its own two feet in competition with other suppliers, both local and international, which all businesses must do if they are to succeed.
The small business was onboarded – and subsequently awarded a three-year contract for mining and construction equipment hire – years before any statutory instruments or local content quotas motivated Kansanshi to contract them.
If increasing economic participation in the sector is the goal, Zambia can learn from Chile’s successful approach, which focuses on targeted incentives to encourage local business participation and improve knowledge transfer and innovation, rather than rigid quotas, according to the World Bank.
Chile’s Mining Skills Strategy involves 12 large mining companies that account for 95 percent of copper production in Chile, major mine suppliers, training institutions, and the Ministries of Labour and Mining. This level of collaboration helped to forecast and plan for the upcoming needs and evolution of the employment market, and also provided the scale to justify public sector investment in education focusing on youth and women, where unemployment has been relatively high in Chile.
Indeed, supporting Zambians in developing the skills they need to participate economically has long been a focus at mines including Kagem emerald mine, and First Quantum Minerals’ Kansanshi and Trident mines. In Solwezi, Northwestern Province, First Quantum Minerals began running a Business Development Training Programme as far back as June 2010, to support the next generation of entrepreneurs in the country’s ‘new copperbelt’.
Kagem is looking to the future and funding Zambia’s first official ‘polytechnic’ – the state-of-the-art Chapula Polytechnic – which will equip local people from Lufwanyama and other areas surrounding the Kagem mine with skills that they can leverage to find employment, or set up businesses in a variety of industries.
“Nobody in today’s mining industry disputes the need to develop local input to the supply chain,” to use the words of Veston Malango, CEO of the Namibia Chamber of Mines, and a Zambian who grew up on the Copperbelt. He added: “However, clearly, mines themselves need to be thriving in order for there to be a big enough marketplace for growing local supplies.”
Watch as Mr Muyelu and his colleagues share more of Handvic’s story.
See also: More mining, more economic opportunities
