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The electric-vehicle revolution has created a global rush for lithium, an essential component of EV batteries. Zimbabwe has one of the world’s largest lithium reserves and is the top supplier of the mineral in Africa. Its annual earnings from lithium exports surged from $1.8 million in total in 2018 to more than $80 million in the first quarter of 2025 alone, and experts still see untapped potential. Several of the country’s large lithium mines have been purchased or built by Chinese companies since late 2021.
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China has the world’s top EV industry and dominates the global lithium supply chain: About 70% of all lithium is processed there. As other nations race to catch up, Beijing has leaned into its long-standing role as a major investor in mining in Africa. In Zimbabwe, China’s relations with the government are particularly close, dating to when it backed eventual dictator Robert Mugabe’s guerilla faction during the struggle for liberation in the 1960s. Mugabe’s successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, has supported Chinese takeovers of lithium mines, arguing they will bring economic growth for a country where close to half the population lives in poverty.
But many residents in mining areas in Zimbabwe say the relationship with China is one of exploitation. The lithium boom has created little benefit for their communities, they argue, and in many ways has harmed them. Residents say they’ve been displaced from their homes by expanding operations at Chinese-run mines with little or no compensation. They say farmland has been degraded and water supplies contaminated. Some residents have complained that well-paying jobs in the mines are often filled by workers imported from China or Zimbabwe’s cities, while unions have criticized conditions and pay. Security crackdowns at the mines have resulted in arrests of illicit miners.
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Many Zimbabweans feel left out. “A lot of people who live near lithium mines would expect to benefit from this resource,” Grasian Mkodzongi, a senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute who focuses on natural resources and the energy transition, recently remarked. “Currently, local people are the losers.”
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Six women [said] they had been sexually assaulted while working illegally at the mine — a problem that predates Sinomine’s acquisition, but which, four of the women said, had worsened under its ownership. All of the women said they were sexually assaulted by security guards, while two said they had been assaulted by fellow miners. One woman, a single mother who asked not to be named, said she was introduced to illegal lithium mining in 2019, at age 17, when she was in desperate need of work. She recounted being sexually assaulted by a security guard when the mine was still under its previous ownership. Sexual assaults became more common, she said, after security measures increased under Sinomine. “It was [more] difficult to enter when the Chinese came, and that is when the abuses intensified, because we had to pay our way into the mine,” the woman said.
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Six villagers [said] they lost access to land they’d previously used for their homesteads, to farm, or to raise animals, when the mine expanded. Residents are being assisted by Zimbabwe’s Human Rights Commission to negotiate compensation, Mudhe said. Some residents who are still able to grow food and raise livestock told Rest of World they worry the mine may eventually displace them too. Residents also told a local news outlet that because of the slime dam, the walk to fetch drinkable water was now 4 kilometers (6.5 miles).
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Some of those who do find jobs in Zimbabwe’s lithium mines have reported problems with working conditions. Labor unions have raised concerns about safety standards across the sector, with Justice Chinhema, general secretary of the Zimbabwe Diamond and Allied Minerals Workers Union, warning of a “disturbing trend” of accidents. Chinhema told Rest of World the union has received reports of accidents at Bikita Minerals as well. Across the country’s mines, however, many cases go unreported, he said, “making it very difficult to give correct statistics.”
In one 2024 incident at a mine in the town of Bindura, a Chinese manager was caught on video tying two Zimbabwean workers to the bucket of a front-end loader by their hands and raising them into the air. This was the most glaring in a series of violent altercations between Chinese nationals and locals, which the Zimbabwe Miners Federation has called “a stark reminder of the need for stricter regulations and oversight of Chinese companies operating in Zimbabwe.”
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