While Congo is more often associated with rebel killings, labeled by the United Nations as the world’s rape capital, filled with red tape and river journeys into the depths of jungled gloom, Congo’s copperbelt, in the southern Katanga province, seems a world apart.

Buoyed by mining income for more than a century, Katanga’s provincial capital Lubumbashi shows little sign that nearly 80 percent of Congo’s 67 million people live on less than $2 a day.

“We are proud that we are the richest province, that we have jobs and that life is much easier than in (the capital) Kinshasa,” said Kabwita Ipanga, a street vendor who sells chess boards made of polished malachite, a mottled green stone from which the copper that has made the province rich can be derived.

Katanga has rebounded since the global financial crisis saw copper prices plunge and mining operations suspended, putting hundreds of thousands out of work. Congo estimates it will double output by 2012 to 850,000 tons of copper and 90,000 tons of cobalt.

Today expatriate miners can count on swimming pools, game-watching and bowling to amuse themselves, and London-listed Lonrho said it opened its smart hotel to serve those drawn by the $12 billion being invested in Katanga’s resources.

The country’s largest single foreign investment, the $2 billion Tenke Fungurume Mining project, in which Freeport McMoRan has a 57.75 percent share, is among several mines that pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes alone.

The zone also brought the Chinese running with a $6 billion deal that offers infrastructure in return for long-term access to copper and cobalt.

With its art gallery, fake beach by a lake and one of Africa’s most successful football teams, TP Mazembe — personally sponsored by Moise Katumbi, the province’s tennis-playing governor who introduced a fleet of ambulances to the town — Lubumbashi screams “new money” with a force that belies a political past so fiery the province once declared itself a separate country.

Today’s riches are far from evenly distributed within the province, while progress has brought some awkward results.

Forty-ton export trucks thunder down Tarmac roads laid by Chinese workers so unfamiliar with French that signboards are riddled with errors.

Controls and corruption at the nearby Zambian border can add three weeks to export times and add 40 percent on top of Zambian prices, as lines of 80 trucks wait for clearance at the border.

“Taxes are exceedingly high so we have to push up prices for the people,” said Lambert Tshisueka, general manager of Hermis transporters, a Greek operation with 250 trucks.

Securing unofficial Katangan influence at the heart of government is critical for keeping the province on board.

“It reduces the likelihood that Katanga will attempt to separate from a country that provides few ostensible benefits to the province,” Melville said.