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In 2021, Zimbabwe’s total output was 1,200 tonnes compared with Australia’s 55,400 tonnes. In 2022, it had the planet’s seventh largest proven lithium reserves, estimated at 310,000 tonnes (Chile had the world’s largest reserves at 9.3mn tonnes)
The Zimbabwean government is pressuring miners to build lithium Battery refineries to meet global demands riding on the back of the surging production of Electric Vehicles and essential electronics crucial for achieving a zero-carbon emission energy transition.
In 2021, Zimbabwe’s total output was 1,200 tonnes compared with Australia’s 55,400 tonnes. In 2022, it had the planet’s seventh largest proven lithium reserves, estimated at 310,000 tonnes (Chile had the world’s largest reserves at 9.3mn tonnes). Sanction-inflicted Zimbabwe finds lithium as a powerful tool for negotiating with the West to lift the sanctions, which considerably derailed its development plans.
Importantly, a senior United Nations (UN) official has advised Zimbabwe to leverage its vast lithium resources to negotiate itself out of Western sanctions. A UN Development Programme (UNDP) representative in the southern African nation Ayodele Odusola said that as all countries would want to be major players in the lithium sub-sector globally, why could not Zimbabwe use it. Zimbabwe must use what it has to get what it wants. All these countries t for pressuring the West to lift eh sanctions.
Zimbabwe has been under US, British, and European Union sanctions since 2001. The Western powers accuse the government of Zimbabwe of human and property rights abuses.
However, the African nation rejects the allegations, arguing that the measures were imposed to punish it for its program of compulsorily acquiring farms from some 4,000 white farmers and parceling it out to more than 380,000 blacks. It says the program, it launched in 2000, is meant to democratize a land ownership structure that favored whites from the onset of British colonialism in the 1890s to 1980.
Zimbabwe is Africa’s top lithium producer and ranks sixth globally. The mineral is used in the production of solar panels and energy storage systems which are central in a decarbonising world. All the three producing mines in the country are owned by Chinese investors.
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Many feel that upping lithium production soon is a difficult proposition, although Zimbabwe is the largest producer of the rare earth in Africa. But its production pales into insignificance compared to that of Chile and Australia. There are also reports about the illegal mining of precious raw materials, which are clandestinely taken out of the country.
