ZIMBABWE has the largest lithium reserves on the African continent. Lithium has been mined since the colonial period in the 1950s. It’s a critical part of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that are essential for the electric vehicle industry. Globally, the lithium-ion battery market is worth US$78,9 billion and is likely to reach US$349,6 billion by 2034. […]
In Zimbabwe they say, hanzi bhande rinonzvenga vakadzi vakapinda mumigoghi (The gold belt will disappear if women go into the underground mine). Many men on artisanal or small-scale gold mining sites are uncomfortable working with women in their syndicates because of this commonly held cultural belief, that women “pollute” the sacredness of the mining space. Yet women […]
ZIMBABWE’S mineral wealth is a fluck of nature. Its earth is packed with such metal ores as gold, lithium, diamond, granite and coal along the vast seams in this part of the southern African country. Throughout the colonial period, colonisers have exploited and extracted these mineral resources. Four decades after Zimbabwe attained its independence the […]
IN OCTOBER 2022, Mberengwa — a remote outback district in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province, was just another impoverished region where villagers struggled to make ends meet. Perennially saddled with droughts due to low rainfall, Mberengwa is one of Zimbabwe’s poorest districts where some villagers battle grinding food shortages. Still concerns permeate through the district that while […]
IN his 2023 national budget propositions, Finance minister Mthuli Ncube, announced new revenue collection measures with regard to mining royalties. Although royalties have always been collected in cash, new measures have been put into place in line with government’s intention to build up precious mineral reserves while mitigating against revenue loss. Mining houses will, therefore, […]
More than 14 years after being forcibly relocated from their ancestral villages to make way for mining in one of the world’s largest diamond-producing projects, residents of Arda Transau are still living in dire poverty. Across the 567-kilometre-wide terrain of diamond fields and mines, known as Marange, that have sold at least 76 million carats […]
For proof, look no further than the transaction that’s just completed around Prospect Resources’ Arcadia lithium project, situated around 38 kilometres east of the capital, Harare. In working up Arcadia, Prospect followed a path that’s been tried and tested by countless junior miners over the decades – it made a discovery, it delineated a resource, […]
TWO weeks ago, the Zimbabwe government was forced to drop its plan to begin charging platinum exporters a 15% beneficiation tax for failing to set up refiners in the country. The contentious tax, which was announced in 2015, but was due to be effective later this year, has been a source of discontentment for platinum […]
INVESTIGATIONS correspondent at the Financial Times, Tim Burgis published a book in 2017 titled The looting machine. It is kaleidoscope of the penury of Africa caused by a coalition between an international predatory mafia and African Presidents and their predatory coalitions made up of party loyalists, the army, intelligence services and State institutions that are […]
THE current state of lithium mining in Zimbabwe exposes a very important issue which authorities must give due attention. The hope is that authorities are not deliberately looking sideways when clear plunder is taking place to benefit from the kickbacks that come as benefits of playing to the tune of big multinationals during the consummation […]
