Katete is a medium-sized town in the Eastern Province of

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most cent ...

, and is headquarters of

Katete District Katete District with headquarters at Katete in Eastern Province, Zambia, includes woodland in the north sloping down into the Luangwa Valley, good farmland amid rocky hills in the centre, and deforested plateau exposed to soil erosion Soil erosio ...

. The town is at the foot of rocky hills which lie to its east, including Mpangwe Hill and Kangarema Hill, which rise to 1600 m. The hills are surrounded by cultivated fields. Katete lies on the

Great East Road The Great East Road is a major road in Zambia and the main route linking its Eastern Province with the rest of the country. It is also the major link between Zambia and Malawi and between Zambia and northern Mozambique.Terracarta: ''Zambia, 2nd ...

about 90 km south-west of the provincial capital,

Chipata The city of Chipata is the administrative centre of the Eastern Province of Zambia and Chipata District. It was declared the 5th city of the country, after Lusaka, Ndola, Kitwe and Livingstone, by President Edgar Lungu on 24 February 2017. The c ...

, at an elevation of 1060 m on the

watershed Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to: Hydrology * Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins * Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...

between the middle

Luangwa River The Luangwa River is one of the major tributaries of the Zambezi River, and one of the four biggest rivers of Zambia. The river generally floods in the rainy season (December to March) and then falls considerably in the dry season. It is one of ...

and the Zambezi. In the town is a major road junction, with a surfaced road branching off and running 50 km to the Mozambique border and connecting with Tete on the Zambezi 339 km to the south-east.

History

Although Katete is now centred on a Great East Road junction, in the 1950s Katete was a small government settlement down a dirt side-track. At the road junction there was just a rudimentary "filling station" (with a manually operated fuel pump). A handful of shops run by Indian traders included a general store-cum-grocery, and a

haberdasher In British English, a haberdasher is a business or person who sells small articles for sewing, dressmaking and knitting, such as buttons, ribbons, and zippers; in the United States, the term refers instead to a retailer who sells men's clothing, ...

with tailors operating treadle

sewing machine A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. Since the inv ...

s on the verandah. The Katete settlement was to service an "NRG" ( Northern Rhodesia Government) secondary technical school for African male students. The school had a brickyard where mud bricks were handmade and kiln-fired. Subjects included woodwork, agriculture, sugar-making (from sugar cane), and leather tanning. Academic subjects such as arithmetic and sciences were also taught. The teachers, who were mainly European, lived in bungalows in the settlement. Neither the schools nor the teachers' houses had mains electricity, lighting being provided by paraffin Tilley lamps. The school, which dealt specifically with adult education, became known as the Area School and was part of the Eastern Province's "NRG Development Area". The school became a centre for a mass literacy programme in the Chichewa language, its students including women. This programme was based on the Frank Laubach system and refined by Hope Hay whose husband, Rev Arthur Hay, was the founder and first principle of the school. Katete was a transport and bus stop on the Great East road for the Thatcher Hobson Service, a small commercial centre. To the south of Katete was the NRG administrative and educational settlement, while the St Francis Church mission hospital and an agricultural research station lay to the North. The surrounding farmland included several tobacco estates established by white settlers.

Economy

Katete Fruit Processing Plant

Commissioning: Planned for September 2022. Construction Cost: ZMW 160 million (US$ 8.8 million).{{Cite web , last=foodbusinessafrica , date=26 March 2021 , title=zambia-to-commence-operations-at-us8-8m-tropical-fruit-processing-plant , url=https://www.foodbusinessafrica.com/zambia-to-commence-operations-at-us8-8m-tropical-fruit-processing-plant/ , website=zambia-to-commence-operations-at-us8-8m-tropical-fruit-processing-plant Operations: Processing fruits such as mangoes, oranges, guavas, watermelons and tomatoes. Direct Jobs: Projected 250.

References

Populated places in Eastern Province, Zambia