Zimbabwe is looking to capitalize on the West’s Green Energy “Future.” Citing its Base Minerals Export Control Act if you want to move lithium out of the country, you’ll need first to process it in Zimbabwe*. Otherwise, no joy.
On December 20, Zimbabwe’s ministry of Mines and Mining Development in a directive published under the nation’s Base Minerals Export Control Act said that the move was made to “ensure that the vision of the president to see the country becoming an upper-middle income economy has been realized.”
Winston Chitando following the export ban said: “No lithium-bearing ores, or unbeneficiated lithium whatsoever, shall be exported from Zimbabwe to another country except under the written permit of the minister.”
China, which has spent the past decade making mineral arrangments with second and third-world countries, is exempt.
According to Reuters, Chinese mining giants and lithium ion battery material manufacturers Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine Resource Group and Chengxin Lithium Group acquired several lithium mine and have bagged projects worth a combined $678 million in Zimbabwe and are at various stages of developing mines and processing plants. These companies are exempted from the ban.
China will also (very likely) be capitalizing on the wealth of minerals and natural resources available in Afghanistan but let’s not get distracted by that.
China, China, China, and the UK have secured mineral rights and are presumably prepared to meet the nation’s expectations. Create jobs here to process material and build batteries in Zimbabwe. And it’s a smart move. They’ve got a lot of lithium, and as noted elsewhere on our pages, there are not enough known reserves of it and other rare earth metals to achieve the West’s fairy-tale promise of Net-Zero using current technology.
The price has skyrocketed in recent years and could make Zimbabwe a very wealthy nation though to date, that’s primarily meant making a few people rich while the balance of the people remains at or near poverty. That may be what happens here, though we can’t say.
We can say that while America appears committed to the road, they are not doing a great job of clearing a path for it.
HT | News18.com
