Mining ZimbabweLatest Mining News, Policy and Industry Updates

Caledonia Mining Corporation has warned that soaring gold prices are drawing school-age children into Zimbabwe’s informal mining sector, as the lure of quick earnings pulls young people out of classrooms and into hazardous work, Mining Zimbabwe can report.

By Ryan Chigoche

The Victoria Falls-listed gold producer, which operates Blanket Mine in Gwanda, said in its latest sustainability report that unregulated artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) poses significant safety, environmental, legal and supply chain risks, adding that elevated gold prices have made informal mining “increasingly attractive, including for youth.”

The warning comes as gold continues its historic rally. The World Gold Council reported that the precious metal reached fresh record highs in 2025, with quarterly average prices exceeding US$4,000 per ounce, strengthening incentives for informal mining in Zimbabwe and other gold-producing countries.

However, behind Zimbabwe’s record gold prices lies a growing social cost. In mining communities, the promise of quick earnings is increasingly pulling children out of classrooms and into dangerous informal mining operations, raising concerns that the country’s gold boom is being accompanied by a silent education crisis.

As a solution, Caledonia said it supports stronger regulation and the formalisation of artisanal mining as a way to reduce the risks associated with informal operations. The company stressed that it does not operate, finance or purchase gold from artisanal miners, adding that illegal mining remains closely linked to unsafe working conditions and the involvement of school-age children.

These concerns reflect a wider global pattern. In its 2025 Global Estimates of Child Labour report, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and UNICEF estimated that 138 million children were engaged in child labour in 2024, including 54 million in hazardous work. The agencies warned that poverty, weak social protection and limited access to quality education continue to push children into dangerous sectors, with Sub-Saharan Africa remaining the most affected region.

Zimbabwe is no exception. A 2023 ILO report estimated that thousands of Zimbabwean children are engaged in hazardous work in artisanal mining, although comprehensive national data remains limited.

The US Embassy in Harare has similarly reported that economic hardship has contributed to rising child labour in artisanal mining, with girls as young as 12 being exploited through sex trafficking in gold mining communities in Mashonaland East, Mazowe, Bindura and Shurugwi.

Zimbabwean law sets the minimum age for employment at 16 and prohibits anyone under 18 from undertaking hazardous work. However, weak enforcement, limited inspection capacity and persistent poverty continue to push vulnerable families towards informal mining.

With gold prices expected to remain elevated, the challenge for policymakers is becoming increasingly urgent. While formalising the ASM sector may improve oversight and safety, the powerful economic pull of record gold prices continues to undermine school attendance and expose children to hazardous work, highlighting the need for stronger enforcement, stronger social protection and greater investment in education to keep children out of the pits and in the classroom.

Just weeks ago, JPMorgan was telling the market to expect gold at $6,000 per ounce by year-end. Now, the investment bank has pulled back sharply, forecasting $4,300 in the third quarter and $4,500 by December, Mining Zimbabwe can report.

By Ryan Chigoche

For Zimbabwe’s gold mining sector, the revision is a mixed bag. Prices remain historically strong — nowhere near the lows that once crippled the industry — but the super-charged rally that many had banked on is no longer in the cards. And with that, so too goes the prospect of a 10% royalty windfall for the fiscus.

The bank blamed softer demand from key physical markets and warned that hotter-than-expected U.S. economic data over the summer could push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates sooner than anticipated. That would put pressure on gold, which offers no yield, as investors chase better returns elsewhere.

On Friday, spot gold climbed 1.3% to $4,174.21 per ounce by 1241 GMT, touching its highest level since June 23. For the week, bullion was up more than 2%. Still, the $6,000 mark that seemed within reach just a month ago now looks like a bridge too far for 2026.

Why the 10% Royalty Won’t Bite – For Now

Under Zimbabwe’s sliding-scale royalty regime, the rate at which gold is taxed depends entirely on where the international price lands:

· 3% when gold is below US$1,200 per ounce
· 5% when it trades between US$1,201 and US$5,000
· 10% only when the price surpasses US$5,000

With JPMorgan now calling a peak of $4,500, the top tier simply won’t be triggered this year. That means the Treasury will have to make do with the 5% rate for large-scale producers, missing out on the extra revenue that a $6,000 price would have delivered.

It’s worth noting that the 10% rate was never going to apply to small-scale miners anyway. The artisanal and small-scale mining sector, which accounts for over 60% of Zimbabwe’s gold deliveries, remains subject to a lower royalty of up to 2% — and that hasn’t changed.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe has set its sights on producing 50 tonnes of gold annually by 2026/2027 — an ambitious goal that requires sustained investment, formalisation of informal miners, and a supportive price environment.

At $4,500 per ounce, a 50-tonne annual output would bring in around $225 million in export earnings. That’s still a hefty sum, but it falls well short of the $300 million that would have come with a $6,000 price tag.

The Long View Remains Bullish

Despite the near-term pullback, JPMorgan hasn’t turned bearish on gold. Far from it. The bank still expects prices to push higher into 2027, driven by sustained central bank buying and structural shifts such as de-dollarisation.

That longer-term picture aligns with Zimbabwe’s own ambitions. The Gold Mobilisation Programme, ongoing formalisation efforts, and incentives for producers are all geared toward unlocking that 50-tonne target — and if JPMorgan’s long-term call proves right, the pricing environment should eventually cooperate.

Bikita Minerals is pushing ahead with plans to commission Zimbabwe’s largest lithium sulphate processing plant this year, a US$400 million project that will cement the country’s position as Africa’s leading lithium producer and redefine its role in the global electric vehicle supply chain.

By Rudairo Mapuranga

The plant, which is being developed by the Sinomine Resource Group subsidiary, is targeting an annual output of 100,000 tonnes of lithium sulphate once fully ramped up. This capacity will make it the single largest lithium sulphate facility in Africa, surpassing the 50,000- to 60,000-tonne plant recently commissioned by Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe at Arcadia.

Sinomine Resource Group Chairman Wang Pingwei recently confirmed to President Emmerson Mnangagwa that the company is “going all out” to complete the 100,000-tonne-per-year lithium sulphate plant, describing it as “the largest lithium salt plant currently planned in Africa”. The facility will make a significant contribution to extending Zimbabwe’s lithium value chain.

The project is being delivered in phases, with the first phase targeting commissioning this year (2026). Preliminary and site works are already underway, with the company confirming that the project is no longer a plan on paper but “steel going into the ground”.

Bikita Minerals Deputy General Manager Amanda Makausi said the company is not waiting for the government’s January 2027 deadline banning all exports of unprocessed lithium.

“The question was never whether to invest in Zimbabwe. It was how quickly we could stop exporting our value and start building it,” Makausi said.

For decades, Bikita Minerals mined rock, processed it to a concentrate level, and shipped it abroad, with the real value—refining, chemistry, and jobs, created elsewhere. The new plant changes that, transforming Bikita from a concentrate exporter into a producer of battery-precursor chemicals and keeping that value inside Zimbabwe.

Lithium sulphate is a high-value intermediate product that feeds directly into the lithium carbonate and hydroxide used to power electric vehicles. By producing it domestically, Zimbabwe moves up the value chain from being a supplier at the very bottom to a participant in the stages where value is actually created.

The project rests on a formidable ore body. Bikita’s lithium resources have grown to more than 113 million tonnes, containing 1.17 million tonnes of lithium oxide at 1.03% Li₂O (equivalent to 2.88 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent). The deposit is one of Africa’s largest spodumene and petalite resources.

Sinomine acquired Bikita in February 2022, and the asset has since become a key pillar in the group’s global lithium strategy. The parent company is now seeking to raise up to US$764 million to expand African lithium and copper projects, with Zimbabwe central to those ambitions.

Zimbabwe is already Africa’s largest lithium producer and holds the world’s sixth-largest lithium reserves. Makausi identified several factors that make the country competitive for advanced processing: world-class grade and scale, the advantage of processing at the mine rather than shipping rock across oceans, improving power infrastructure (including solar generation and the Tokwe–Bikita power line), a capable workforce, and a government beneficiation policy that offers investors a stable horizon.

The energy infrastructure is being reinforced. Sinomine has installed a new 132kV power line linking Bikita to Masvingo, Nyika, and Zaka, and is constructing a 20MW solar project to future-proof operations.

The project is being built ahead of Zimbabwe’s January 2027 deadline banning all exports of unprocessed lithium. The government has insisted it will stick to that timeline despite pleas from other producers for an extension. Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has said companies unable to build their own processing capacity can sign tolling agreements with those that have it, naming Bikita Minerals as one of the two companies expected to provide sufficient processing capacity.

Currently, among Zimbabwe’s seven major lithium producers, only Huayou Cobalt’s Prospect Lithium has completed and commissioned a lithium sulphate plant and achieved product shipments. Bikita Minerals and Kamativi are still under construction.

Bikita Minerals currently employs nearly 1,500 direct workers and supports thousands of indirect livelihoods. Once operational, the lithium sulphate plant will significantly boost export revenues and create additional jobs.

The company has also invested in a caesium flotation plant, the first facility globally dedicated to recovering low-grade caesium ores, alongside further investment in a tantalite processing facility. A US$3 million tantalite plant will reprocess more than 1.4 million tonnes of historic tailings annually.

“For a century, the world came to Africa for raw materials and left with the value. This plant is part of rewriting that narrative,” Makausi said.

With Zimbabwe’s lithium industry projected to reach a peak turnover of US$3.2 billion by 2030 from lithium sulphate production alone, and miners committing up to US$5 billion in new investment, Bikita’s US$400 million investment is a cornerstone of a broader transformation.

The question for other large lithium producers is now unavoidable: Where is your processing plant? By January 2027, no raw rock will leave Zimbabwe, only processed salts. Bikita is already building its answer.

The global electric vehicle battery industry’s growing emphasis on securing raw materials rather than refining capacity is reinforcing Zimbabwe’s strategic position as a lithium producer, even as questions emerge over how its beneficiation drive will interact with shifting global supply dynamics, Mining Zimbabwe can report.

By Ryan Chigoche

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL), which dominates roughly 39.2 per cent of the global EV battery market, says the biggest constraint facing battery manufacturing is no longer processing, but access to mined raw materials.

“Processing is not the bottleneck, but mining is,” CATL Vice President Jiang Li said in a recent interview. “We want to build our cost advantage with our upstream capabilities.”

The comments reflect a broader structural shift in the battery value chain. While China continues to dominate mineral refining, manufacturers are increasingly prioritising direct access to mining assets as price volatility and supply insecurity reshape investment decisions.

CATL has already moved in that direction, planning to establish a dedicated mining unit while bringing in senior advisory expertise from China’s largest metals mining group. Its existing portfolio includes lithium, cobalt and phosphate assets across China and overseas.

The company’s own lithium mine in Jiangxi has experienced disruptions since August 2025, contributing to recent price volatility—a development that appears to be accelerating its upstream push.

Supply Security Is Now Driving Investment

The strategic shift highlights a wider industry reality: supply security, rather than processing efficiency, is now the main driver of investment decisions in the battery sector.

For lithium-rich countries such as Zimbabwe, this trend is significant. It suggests that ownership and control of upstream resources are becoming as important as downstream processing capacity in determining long-term relevance in global battery supply chains.

Zimbabwe has Africa’s largest lithium reserves and has attracted more than US$3.4 billion in mining and processing investments since 2021, largely from Chinese-linked capital seeking long-term supply security.

However, CATL’s comments suggest that future investment decisions may increasingly prioritise stable, scalable mine output over downstream policy frameworks alone.

Beneficiation Strategy Is Validated – But With a Caveat

Zimbabwe’s policy shift toward mineral beneficiation, most notably its ban on the export of unprocessed lithium, aligns with global efforts to move up the value chain.

On paper, this strategy is supported by the global direction of the industry, which is seeking more resilient and geographically diversified supply chains.

However, CATL’s framing introduces an important caveat: while beneficiation is strategically sound, it does not replace the growing importance of mining output itself.

In other words, Zimbabwe’s strategy is validated in principle, but its success depends on whether domestic processing capacity expands fast enough to match rising investor expectations for supply security and volume consistency.

Failure to scale both mining and beneficiation in parallel could risk bottlenecks that undermine the country’s competitiveness in a market where suppliers are increasingly sensitive to supply disruption.

Sodium Batteries Are Not Replacing Lithium Yet

Alongside its upstream mining push, CATL is also advancing sodium-ion batteries as part of its long-term risk management strategy.

However, the company is not signalling a transition away from lithium. Instead, sodium is positioned as a hedge against periods of elevated lithium prices.

“If the price of lithium goes up, then we can make more sodium-ion batteries,” Jiang Li said.

This conditional approach is critical. It confirms that lithium remains the backbone of global battery supply chains, while sodium serves as a complementary technology for specific applications, particularly energy storage and cost-sensitive segments.

For Zimbabwe, this means lithium demand remains structurally intact in the medium term, even if diversification into alternative chemistries gradually increases over time.

Zimbabwe’s Balancing Act

CATL’s upstream strategy underscores a central tension for Zimbabwe: how to balance resource nationalism and beneficiation policies with the need to remain an attractive, reliable supplier of mined lithium.

The country’s policy direction has strengthened its positioning as a value-add hub, but the global shift highlighted by CATL suggests that mine output reliability may ultimately matter just as much as processing capacity.

CATL itself has previously said Zimbabwe’s export restrictions are unlikely to materially disrupt global lithium supply, noting that production is still dominated by Australia, South America and China, while local processing capacity in Zimbabwe continues to expand.

Bank of America Securities has also assessed the impact of Zimbabwe’s policy shift as limited, citing CATL’s ability to pass upstream cost pressures on to consumers.

The broader signal from CATL is clear: the next phase of competition in the battery industry will not only be about refining capacity or chemistry innovation, but about securing stable access to raw materials at scale.

For Zimbabwe, the opportunity is significant—but so is the pressure. The country is increasingly central to the global lithium narrative, yet its long-term position will depend on whether it can simultaneously expand mining output, accelerate beneficiation and maintain investor confidence in a rapidly tightening supply race.