Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth risks becoming little more than a paper resource if communities living alongside mining operations cannot see tangible benefits from the resources extracted around them, a legislator has warned.
Hon. Edwin Mushoriwa, a member of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget, Finance and Investment Promotion, said the country needed to look beyond the size of its mineral reserves and the revenues generated from mining to what the sector was delivering to communities, Mining Zimbabwe can report.
By Ryan Chigoche
Speaking at a recent meeting, Mushoriwa questioned the value of celebrating Zimbabwe’s vast mineral endowment when citizens in resource-rich areas cannot point to lasting improvements linked to the wealth being extracted from their surroundings.
“It is one thing to say that we have a huge mineral reserve, but when there is no real tangible evidence, it becomes a trick,” Mushoriwa said.
He said the legislative framework should give communities a clearer stake in the economic value generated from minerals extracted in their areas.
“We want to make sure that the Mines and Minerals Act and the Economic Empowerment Act provide a framework that can also benefit the communities.”
That concern extends beyond how much mining generates for the national fiscus to how much of that value becomes visible at the point of extraction.
“More often than not, the Minister of Finance will say, ‘No, we are going to raise the stakes and we will reinforce it.’ But all the time that money goes to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.”
The issue is becoming more prominent as Zimbabwe expands mining and pushes for greater local processing and beneficiation, particularly in critical minerals such as lithium, where billions of dollars of investment have flowed into the country since 2021.
While the sector has strengthened Zimbabwe’s position in the global critical-minerals race, its rapid expansion has also brought greater scrutiny of the conditions facing communities around mining operations.
A March 2026 study by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, based on surveys of 230 people across all six operational lithium mining sites in Zimbabwe, found that 40% of respondents rated socioeconomic development in their areas as poor, while only 19 respondents rated it positively. The study also found that 94% of respondents felt their input and feedback was not valued by mining companies.
Environmental concerns were similarly prominent. Air pollution was identified by 84% of respondents and noise pollution by 72%, while the research also documented concerns around land-use changes, displacement, compensation, roads and infrastructure.
The findings also point to a challenge around the quality of economic opportunities generated by mining, with employment for local residents concentrated largely in low-skilled and unskilled positions.
Those findings provide a wider context to Mushoriwa’s call for communities to have a stronger stake in mineral development, particularly as lithium becomes increasingly important to Zimbabwe’s mining strategy.
The contrasting accounts highlight the central question behind Mushoriwa’s intervention: whether the economic activity and community projects associated with mining are translating into benefits that host communities regard as meaningful relative to the scale of extraction taking place around them.
That question also brings the focus back to the way mining revenues are distributed.
The Consolidated Revenue Fund is the central pool through which government revenues are managed, meaning mining-related collections become part of the wider resources available for national expenditure rather than being directly allocated to the communities where extraction occurs.
For mining districts, this can make the connection between mineral production and local development less visible, particularly where communities continue to face infrastructure and service-delivery challenges.
The issue is now feeding into Parliament’s work on the Mines and Minerals Bill, with Mushoriwa saying lawmakers are seeking to revise provisions they consider problematic.
“We wanted the Mines and Minerals Bill, which is before Parliament. It has its problems, but what we are best at doing at the moment, working with the Portfolio Committee on Mines, is trying to rewrite some of the provisions in the Bill.”
The legislative push comes as Zimbabwe seeks to retain more value from its mineral resources through domestic processing and beneficiation.
The Government has tightened restrictions on the export of unprocessed lithium and is pushing producers to establish processing capacity in the country, with the broader objective of retaining more economic value locally.
But processing more minerals inside Zimbabwe does not, by itself, settle the question of what host communities receive.
The Boston University research points to stronger benefit-sharing and community participation mechanisms, alongside investment in roads, energy and water infrastructure that can serve both mining operations and surrounding communities.
That becomes increasingly relevant as Zimbabwe seeks further investment into lithium and other minerals linked to the global energy transition. As the country moves from an extraction-focused model towards greater processing and potentially deeper participation in mineral value chains, expectations from host communities are also rising.
For those communities, the impact of that transformation will not be measured only through production figures, export earnings or new processing plants.
It will also be seen in whether mining creates durable local employment, strengthens surrounding businesses, improves infrastructure and protects access to essential resources such as water.
Mushoriwa’s intervention therefore brings the community question directly into the legislative discussion over Zimbabwe’s mineral future: whether the wealth beneath the country’s soil can translate into benefits that are visible not only in national economic statistics, but also in the communities where that wealth is extracted.
