The Nambya Cultural Association and the Nambya Development Organisation Trust are registered organisations advocating the promotion of Nambya culture and language, based in Hwange, in northwest Zimbabwe.
NCA was founded in the early 1960s as it battled for the survival of the Nambya language.
NDOT is the arm of NCA which is a registered trust whose sole purpose is to mobilize material and financial resources that will be used for furtherance of NCA activities and fulfill the objectives of the organisations.
Nambya people were displaced by the colonial government and settled in dry and rocky areas that are not suitable for farming. They gave way to the establishment of the Hwange National park and the construction of the railway line. The Hwange District is about 32 000 sq. km in area (the size of Belgium, Lesotho or Burundi) and the residents face a challenging dry climate. The major industy is the Hwange Colliery and the associated power plants.
The Hwange district attracts people from all over the world for purposes of coal exploitation and transportation and thermal power generation. It is also home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Victoria Falls as well as the mighty Zambezi River, and the renowned Hwange National Park, tone of the largest National Park in Southern Africa. This natural resource endowment has made the district an economic hub of the country.
The exploitation of these resources has hardly benefited the local Nambya people. If anything, it has seen them battle to sustain their language, their culture and their identity as the district has become a melting pot of different cultures and tribes as people from all over the world who seek either employment or business opportunities in the area. The migrants bring along with themselves their culture and language. Natural resources namely coal, vegetation and wild life are being harvested but no plans to replace or conserve these are in place.