eBusiness Weekly
Wonder Mushove stared blankly at plumes of red dust billowing into the sky as more than 30 trucks carrying loads of lithium ore rumbled past his newly-built house in Buhera, in eastern Zimbabwe.
The trucks drive by Mukwasi village on the dirt road linking the Chinese-owned Sabi Star lithium mine to the tarred highway.
They travel through the border town of Mutare to the port of Beira in neighbouring Mozambique. From there, the lithium-containing minerals are loaded onto ships and exported to China — the world’s largest manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries.
The dust hung in the air after the trucks’ passage. Mushove and his family were among dozens of households displaced by the US$130million-mining project, which began operating in May.
They were relocated to new houses built by the mining company about a kilometre from their old homes.
And yet, Mushove is hopeful the mine could “uplift the area and put it on the world map,” he told Climate Home News.
For decades, the vast, hard-rock lithium deposits buried under his home were of little interest to foreign investors. Now, Chinese companies are paying a high price to access Zimbabwe’s reserves — the largest in Africa and among the largest in the world.
A lightweight metal with the ability to store lots of energy, lithium is critical for the manufacture of batteries for electric cars.
Global efforts to move away from combustion-engine vehicles have pushed demand for the silvery metal, also known as “white gold”, to soar.
Chinese companies have flocked to Zimbabwe’s untapped reserves of high-grade lithium to shore up the country’s supplies.
In the past two years, Chinese companies invested over US$1,4 billion acquiring lithium projects in Zimbabwe. And more money is on its way.
Last year, Chinese companies were awarded licences that could see US$2,79 billion in investment flow into the country, mostly in the mining and energy sectors.
These investments could turn Zimbabwe into a key player in the global lithium-ion battery supply chain. Chinese battery manufacturing giant BYD could source some of its lithium from Zimbabwe, after buying a stake in the Chinese owners of the Sabi Star mine.
The race for ‘white gold’
To produce EVs and grid storage batteries at the scale needed to meet global climate goals, lithium demand is expected to increase nine-fold between 2022 and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency — raising the prospect of a supply crunch.
Zimbabwe’s reserves could help ease some of that pressure. The Government aims to supply a fifth of the world’s demand. Eddie Cross, a former advisor to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, is even more optimistic, expecting the country “to command a quarter of global demand in three years,” he told Climate Home.
Mining consultancy CRU forecasts Zimbabwe will become the world’s fifth largest producer by 2025 — up from its sixth place last year.
Chinese investments in lithium projects in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa is betting on the lithium rush to catapult the country into an upper-middle-income economy by 2030. To achieve this, President Mnangagwa aspires to turn Zimbabwe into a battery manufacturing hub.
China’s lithium rush
China towers over the lithium-ion battery supply chain. But its own lithium resources are limited and it has sought to secure access to deposits overseas.
Isolated by the West and slapped with 20 years of sanctions, Zimbabwe has turned towards China, now the country’s largest foreign investor. Since the 1950s, China’s foreign policy has been guided by “five principles of peaceful co-existence”, including a commitment not to interfere in another country’s internal affairs. This principle, which encapsulates China’s approach, has set it apart from western investors.
‘Lithium is our only hope’
For smallholder farmers living in the vicinity of the Sabi Star mine in Buhera — one of Zimbabwe’s districts — lithium mining has brought the promise of jobs and a better life.
Around the mine, climate change is causing rainfall to regularly fail, leaving rain-dependent subsistence farmers acutely food insecure.
Pastures and water sources for livestock are drying up and only drought resistant Mopane trees and thorny shrubs remain across the parched land.
Abishell Chikunda, a 75-year-old farmer who grows sunflower and groundnuts to sustain himself and his two deaf grandchildren, lives on land adjacent to the mine. Repeated droughts have hurt his income and made life increasingly unbearable.
“We lost most of our cattle due to tick-borne diseases and the lithium is now our only hope,” he said.
With mining claims straddling 2 600 hectares, the equivalent of 4 900 football fields, the Sabi Star lithium mine — one of the country’s largest — has the potential to produce about 900 000 tonnes of raw lithium ore per year.
In 2021, Chengxin Lithium Group, one of China’s largest lithium producers, acquired a majority share in the mine’s operator, Max Mind Investments.
Chengxin Lithium Group’s biggest customers include Chinese companies BYD and CATL, respectively the world’s third and first largest EV battery manufacturers.
In 2022, BYD, which recently overtook Tesla as the world’s bestselling EV company, bought a 5 percent stake in Chengxin — securing lithium supplies.
Chengxin Lithium said in a statement that the mine would create up to 600 jobs and ease pressure on local employment. The company has installed solar-powered boreholes to supply communities with clean water, renovated school buildings, built a community clinic and promised to tarmac the dusty road.
Edgars Seenza, secretary for provincial affairs and devolution for the area, is bullish that lithium mining will turn around the region and the country’s fortunes.
“If you look at what the company has done even before they started mining, it shows how serious (it) is,” Seenza told Climate Home.
The processing challenge
Last year, as the Chinese-led scramble for Zimbabwe’s lithium resources intensified, the Government banned the export of raw lithium ore, requiring miners to start processing the mineral in-country in the hope of cashing in on higher-value exports.
Chinese companies invested millions of dollars in building first-stage processing plants — raising their stake in the country’s nascent lithium industry.
At Sabi Star, a US$45million processing plant will start separating the lithium-rich minerals from solid rocks to produce 300 000 tonnes of lithium concentrate per year for export to China. There, the concentrate will undergo further transformations to make battery-grade lithium. — Climate Home News
