Zambia presses Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal's Vedanta to fund power for its copper mine

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema has urged Vedanta Resources, the mining group controlled by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, to move faster on building power generation capacity to support the expansion of Konkola Copper Mines, the country's most contested mining asset.

Hichilema made the call after meeting Pushpender Singla, Vedanta's head of strategy and growth, who briefed him on progress at Konkola and on the company's plan to lift annual copper output to 500,000 tonnes over the longer term, according to a report published on Wednesday, Sept. 10 by Shanghai Metals Market.

The president said further investment in generation would serve both the mine and Zambia's wider energy goals. No capacity figure, investment amount or timetable was disclosed by either side.

The 500,000-tonne target is not new. CopperTech Metals, the Vedanta subsidiary that now owns and runs Konkola, set it out as a long-term ambition when it launched last November.

Why power decides everything at Konkola

Konkola is not an ordinary mine, and its electricity requirement is not an ordinary line item.

The orebody sits deep underground in Zambia's Copperbelt at grades well above those found in South America, which is what has kept buyers interested through two decades of disputes. It also sits beneath enormous volumes of water. Konkola is among the wettest mines anywhere in the world, and keeping it operable means pumping continuously. Stop the pumps and the mine floods.

That makes power a condition of production rather than an input to it. Expanding output from the current level to 300,000 tonnes, and eventually to half a million, means sinking deeper, pumping more and smelting more, each stage drawing more electricity than the last.

Zambia cannot currently guarantee that supply. The country depends heavily on hydroelectric generation, and the drought that hit southern Africa in 2024 cut output sharply, forcing major miners to import electricity to keep operating. National copper production still rose 12 percent that year to about 820,670 tonnes, up from 732,580 tonnes in 2023, but the episode exposed how exposed the industry is to rainfall.

Hichilema's government wants to triple national output to 3 million tonnes within a decade. Copper accounts for more than 70 percent of Zambia's export earnings, and every new tonne needs power the grid does not yet have. Asking Vedanta to generate its own is a way of moving that cost onto the miner while adding capacity the country can eventually draw on.

The mine Vedanta lost and won back

Vedanta bought into Konkola in 2004 and says it has since put more than $3 billion into the asset, covering shaft development, smelter upgrades and concentrator work.

The relationship collapsed in 2019, when the government of President Edgar Lungu placed the mine into provisional liquidation, accusing Vedanta of misrepresenting its expansion plans and paying too little tax. The company spent roughly five years fighting to get it back.

The settlement came under Hichilema, who took office in 2021. Vedanta agreed a court-approved plan to clear the mine's debts, paid about $246 million to creditors, and management control passed back to the company in July 2024. Vedanta committed to invest a further $1 billion as part of the terms.

In November 2025 the group restructured the holding. It launched CopperTech Metals Inc., a United States-domiciled company, to own and operate Konkola, and said it would raise $1.5 billion in the American market to fund modernisation, including artificial intelligence systems for exploration and extraction. CopperTech holds 79.4 percent of Konkola. ZCCM Investments Holdings, the Zambian state vehicle, retains 20.6 percent.

The American framing was deliberate. Agarwal described the venture as linking America's critical mineral requirements to Zambia's copper industry, positioning the mine as a supply source for United States data centre, defence and clean energy demand at a moment when Washington is trying to reduce dependence on Chinese-processed metal. Priya Agarwal-Hebbar, his daughter and a director of Vedanta Limited, chairs CopperTech.

Vedanta had earlier signalled it might list the Zambian unit. Ajay Goel, chief financial officer of Vedanta Limited, told Bloomberg Television in May 2025 that a listing was under active consideration, without giving a location or size.

Agarwal and the debt behind the plan

Agarwal, 72, started as a scrap metal dealer in Bihar in the 1970s and built Vedanta into one of the largest producers of aluminium, zinc, silver, copper, iron ore, oil and gas in the world. He controls Vedanta Resources, headquartered in London, through Volcan Investments, which he owns outright. Forbes valued him at about $4.2 billion earlier this year. He has signed the Giving Pledge and has said he will direct 75 percent of his wealth to philanthropy.

The group reported record revenue of $18.2 billion for the financial year ending March 31, up 6 percent, with consolidated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rising 16 percent to $5.5 billion.

Debt is the complication. Vedanta has spent years reducing borrowings at the parent level and restructuring its capital, and it has not disclosed how the $1.5 billion earmarked for Konkola will be funded. Adding power stations to that list, whatever they cost, extends a capital programme the group is already financing against a stretched balance sheet.

Konkola produced around 140,000 tonnes in the financial year to March 2026. Reaching 300,000 by 2031 requires the money to arrive on schedule and the electricity to be there when it does. Hichilema's intervention suggests the government is not convinced of either yet.

Neither Vedanta nor the Zambian presidency has said what generation technology is under discussion, whether solar, hydro, thermal or a combination, or who would own the resulting capacity.