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China’s investment in Africa’s lithium mines begins to pay off with new mineral supply chains created
- China’s investment in Zimbabwe’s Kamativi lithium mine has seen production of the essential mineral increase exponentially
- It is part of Beijing’s plan to open up lithium supply, with the development of African processing plants helping secure the ‘white gold’
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In northwest Zimbabwe, a mining site abandoned three decades ago is roaring back to life after a Chinese company pumped millions of dollars into a new lithium processing plant, amid the latest global rush for the “white gold”.
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Development of the Kamativi lithium mine, located about 90km (56 miles) southeast of Hwange in Matabeleland North Province, is being done in two phases. The first phase is now up and running, with the mine producing an annual total of 300,000 tonnes of raw spodumene ore and 50,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate.
Next month, it is expected that the second phase will get under way, when production will rise to 2.3 million tonnes of raw ore and 300,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate each year. Spodumene is an ore rich in lithium. It is processed to extract that lithium, which is then used to produce lithium-ion batteries, used in a wide range of products from electric vehicles to solar panels.
Traditionally, Australia has been China’s main supplier of spodumene – it accounted for 79 per cent of China’s imports of spodumene in 2023, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
But as Australia and other top global lithium producers draw up their own critical mineral plans, with exports tightening, “China has continued to explore steady supplies of lithium, including in Africa,” a recent article by S&P said.
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That is nowhere more apparent than in Zimbabwe. Kamativi is the fifth lithium processing plant to go live in the southern African country, which has recently become a hot destination for Chinese capital as Beijing ramps up imports of lithium and other critical battery metals, including cobalt and graphite.
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