How Zimbabwe Can Leverage Rising Lithium Demand

A dirty road breaks into the Gutaurare area, a sprawling farming community about 50 kilometers south of Zimbabwe's eastern border city of Mutare. In this part of the country, people eke a living through small-scale farming, mainly rain-fed summer cropping and livestock farming.  

 Near an imposing mountain in this area, a mining company recently discovered rich lithium deposits, bringing both excitement and anxiety among local people. Globally, lithium has been touted as one of the potential drivers of the green economy. But in Zimbabwe, lithium mining’s carbon footprint is too large to ignore. Lithium mining activities in various parts of Zimbabwe have led to significant land degradation; farmers are losing vast tracts of farmland, pastures, and clean water sources, and are also experiencing enormous air pollution.

Zimbabwe is the largest producer of lithium in Africa and one of the top producers in the world, yet communities where the mineral is mined have nothing to show for it. Instead, these communities are sliding deeper into poverty.

And farmers in Gutaurare area fear they might be displaced by the lithium mining company. 

"It's [the lithium mining] highly politicized and corrupt, with no proper community engagement. What benefit does it bring to the community? And what kind of compensation for the affected community members whose fields are going to be affected by the mining operations?" queried Nicholas Mukundidza, a local farmer.

Mukundidza's family—like hundreds of other families in this area—has been farming in Gutaurare area for nearly five decades, having been resettled during the first phase of Zimbabwe's land reform program soon after the country attained independence from Britain in 1980. Each family was allocated 12 acres of land. Mukundidza has since diversified from crop farming to beekeeping. He now has several beehives dotted around the nearby hills and forests. All of which are now threatened by the new lithium mining venture.

"Right now, the actual mining has not yet started; we don't know when it will start and how it's going to be done. Everything is shrouded in secrecy," a visibly dejected Mukundidza said.

Nicholas Mukundidza, a farmer and beekeeper in Gutaurare, Zimbabwe, expressed concern about corruption in the Lithium extraction industry in the region: Photo provided by the Author.

However, it remains unclear which company is planning to open the lithium mine in the area. Efforts to obtain more information from senior Zimbabwean government officials were unsuccessful. However, most of the lithium mining projects dotted across the country are linked to Chinese companies. Some of these lithium mining projects include Sabi Star Mine, Bikita Minerals, Arcadia Lithium Mine, Zulu Lithium Project, Kamativi Polymetallic Lithium Mine, Mapinga Lithium Salt Plants, and Kamativi Tailings Lithium Project, among others.

Several mining experts and human rights activists have raised concerns over the opacity of  Zimbabwe's lithium mining sector. In a recent study, Joshua Matanzima from the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM) at the University of Queensland's Sustainable Minerals Institute, Australia, revealed that Zimbabwe lacked a lithium extraction strategy that could guide investment prospects, extraction, and exportation of the resource.

"As such, the lithium industry is fraught with serious social and environmental risks that are externalized to communities. Other jurisdictions, such as Australia, Canada, and the U.S, have taken a lead in drafting critical mineral strategies that Zimbabwe could draw lessons from. As well, Zimbabwe has no resettlement policy, and recent studies have been pushing for the need to introduce a resettlement framework that would guide the relocation of communities either by development or mining projects to ensure that affected people are left better off after resettlement," Matanzima noted. 

Matanzima added that the presence of lithium in Zimbabwe was reminiscent of another resource curse. "While the resource can be used to promote local development through offering affected people jobs, training, infrastructure developments, and cash compensation, currently, this is not the case. A few are benefiting from the extraction of the resource. Currently, compensation packages in Zimbabwe are deemed unfair," Matanzima said.

In a policy paper published late last year, Grasian Mkodzongi, an executive director at the Tropical Africa-Land and Natural Resources Research Institute, noted that the country was likely to encounter challenges in its pursuit of a resource-driven national economic development strategy. 

“To avoid the usual pitfalls faced by resource-rich countries, the country must tighten its regulatory regime in order to promote compliance with its tax laws. This can discourage corruption and tax avoidance,” Mkodzongi said.

James Mupfumi, the director of the Centre for Research and Development, a Zimbabwe-based investigative NGO, said the government designated lithium a strategic mineral in 2023, shutting doors to local small-scale miners from exploiting the resource. 

“Therefore, in the interim where the [Zimbabwe] Statutory Instrument 57 of 2023 on Base Minerals Export Control permits for exporting unbeneficiated lithium on condition that foreign companies partner with Zimbabweans or permission is granted by the President [of Zimbabwe], community leadership, such as traditional leaders, must band local people together and exploit these provisions to derive community shares,” Mupfumi said. 

Mupfumi described how the Gutaurare community needed to develop a Community Development Agreement (CDA) or Community Share Ownership Trust (CSOT) that ensured the host community received a fair share of benefits from lithium mining, ranging from employment opportunities to the benefits of lithium, which would support local enterprise development.

“CDAs will also increase local participation in mining and policy decision-making processes. However, these opportunities can only materialize if there is government support. The government needs to come up with a transparent mineral policy regime that obligates mining companies to remit shares to CSOTs or CDAs,” Mupfumi said.

The current Zimbabwe Statutory Instrument 57 of 2023 does not prioritize local communities in the lithium mining value chain. “It is restrictive and opaque and deliberately designed to benefit political elites by making it easy for them to access mining contracts and export permits in lithium mining,” explained Mupfumi.

Zimbabwean lithium companies, Mupfumi said, were still exporting unbeneficiated lithium; there was opacity in exploration and mining. This is due to archaic legislation, the government's reluctance to reform, revenue remittances largely shrouded in secrecy, and prices determined by government elites in collaboration with miners. 

Mupfumi outlined how "little effort is achieved towards establishing value addition and beneficiation, such as lithium processing hubs to produce battery plants and create massive employment and downstream industries.” Farai Maguwu, who leads the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, an NGO based in Zimbabwe, weighed in, adding that farmers in the Gutaurare area, who might be affected by the lithium mine, should start organizing now and educating each other about their rights over their natural resources. 

"They must not be too obedient to companies and politicians. It is very important for them to understand that neither the government nor the mining company carries their interests; hence, they must know what they want from the outset," Maguwu said. 

Maguwu said consultations with the community must not be under duress or through some dishonest means. “[The] government must genuinely consult in the spirit of wanting to hear the concerns of the people,” he said.  He added that the government must learn from countries that have successfully developed mechanisms for communities to benefit from their resources, like the Royal Bafokeng Nation of South Africa. 

“Lithium mining in Zimbabwe has followed the resource curse route—a paradox of plenty. All the communities rich in lithium are frustrated with the plunder. Not one community is benefiting. Their portion is to pay the externalized costs of lithium mining: land grabbing, exhumation of the remains of loved ones, water grabbing, violence, dust and noise pollution, among others,” Maguwu said.