Zambia, CIPEC, and the Global South visions for development in the long 1960s.
Home > Zambia, CIPEC, and the Global South visions for development in the long 1960s.
In this post, Santiago Garcia-Pardo (London School of Economics) presents their research, which was supported by the Economic History Society through the Research Fund for Graduate Students.
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In June 1967, Ministers of Mines from Chile, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru and Zambia gathered in Lusaka to celebrate the first Inter-Governmental Copper Conference. The four countries, which represented around three-quarters of the commercialised copper of the world, hoped to reform global copper markets and secure greater earnings for the producers as a step towards economic sovereignty. After a week of discussions around copper industry, production, and commercialisation, they created the Intergovernmental Council of Copper Exporting Countries, CIPEC, with the goal of transforming raw commodities governance and trade. Despite CIPEC’s importance for understanding the visions and paths for development in Africa and the global South during the 1960s and 1970s, as well their constraints and limitations, it remains heavily ignored within historical accounts following its failure to control copper prices.
My research examines the development of diplomatic relations between Chile and Zambia between 1964 and 1976, considering the creation of CIPEC in 1967 and its later development as a central aspect of them. By exploring the economic, political and cultural dimensions of these contacts, the project investigates their objectives, motivations, limits and impacts, and analyses how South-South cooperation generated new visions for development and economic collaboration. Thanks to the Research Fund for Graduate Students of the EHS, which covered an important part of the associated costs, I was able to conduct archival research in Zambia from April to June 2026, exploring the collections of the National Archives of Zambia (NAZ), located in Lusaka, and the Zambia Consolidated Coppermine Archives (ZCCM), located in Ndola. The archive findings, mostly related to CIPEC, reveal that the organisation was more than a failed cartel or a straightforward expression of Third World solidarity. It was an ambitious South-South cooperation initiative, driven by political connections and new economic thinking, but constrained by financial limitations, diverging national interests, and the influence of external actors, such as copper mining companies.
Documents at the NAZ suggest that Chile’s openness towards Zambia, combined with the centrality of copper on both countries’ economies, encouraged President Kenneth Kaunda to propose to his Chilean counterpart, Eduardo Frei, the realisation of a conference of copper producing countries in Lusaka. The economic connection expanded diplomatic ties, as Chile established an embassy in Zambia in 1967 and the conference was held in June that year. The establishment of CIPEC, however, was not straightforward. Archival reports on the conference organisation reveal that Zambia did not initially envision the creation of a permanent inter-governmental organisation. CIPEC emerged after discussions in Lusaka convinced the four delegations that the establishment of an international body was the necessary move to achieve their shared objectives. Yet, the offices of the new organization were established in Paris, because of the city’s proximity to important copper consumers, trade hubs and access to efficient communication networks. This illustrates a central tension of CIPEC. While member states sought to transform global copper governance through South-South collaboration, they remained tied to institutions and trade networks based in the global North. The practical challenges of financing South-South cooperation are another aspect revealed by the documents at the NAZ. Organising the conference meetings and the delegates’ activities required funds that exceeded the capabilities of the Government of Zambia, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa provided financial support to hire crucial typewriters and translators to allow for communication between English, Spanish and French. The pursuit of economic sovereignty was thus constrained with material limitations constraints and the need to engage with the trade structures that the governments sought to reform.
Market stabilisation and price control were among the main topics discussed within CIPEC’s conferences of Ministers. Documents from the ZCCM collections show that the efforts for market stabilisation did not usually progress. In preparation for the 1971 Kinshasa Conference, Chile, Peru and the Mining Development Corporation (MINDECO) of Zambia prepared proposals to reach a floor price for copper, without reaching an agreement on a common strategy. This only happened in 1974, when CIPEC agreed to a production cutback. What is interesting to note is that, once Zambia partially nationalised its copper mines in 1969, executives from Roan Selection Trust and Anglo American remained in the new state consortiums, advising MINDECO on matters related to CIPEC. The archives suggest that they influenced CIPEC disagreements of 1971, which were not only shaped by governments, but by the continuing influence of foreign mining companies as well.
The archival material collected in Lusaka and Ndola highlights how economic ideas travelled across South-South networks during the era of decolonisation. Rather than presenting the global South as a cohesive and coherent actor, the documents reveal the existence of tensions, negotiations, competing priorities and varied visions of development. Understanding these debates, their complexities, and the actors that participated in them will allow us to recover an important experience of the efforts made by developing countries to reshape the international economic order and carve an original path towards development.
To contact the author:
Santiago Garcia Pardo.
PhD © London School of Economics & Political Science, International History Department.
