As of June 2025, the Zimbabwean government has announced that exports of raw lithium concentrate will be banned starting in January 2027. This move is meant to push mining companies to build local processing plants and keep more of the value chain within the country, thus helping towards the country’s development, and stopping the cycle of exports of raw materials and barely anything (The Lithium of Zimbabwe). This should also create employment for the locals.

Several Chinese firms—like Sinomine and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt—are already building lithium sulfate plants at the Bikita and Arcadia mines. These facilities will refine lithium concentrate into lithium sulfate, a key ingredient for battery-grade chemicals like lithium carbonate and hydroxide.

There is not yet a full refinery built, but this ban indicates Zimbabwe’s clear shift from being just a raw exporter of lithium. Given the importance of lithium in the electric car revolution as a material for batteries, this is really a game changer. We applaud Zimbabwe, and call other countries to learn from Zimbabwe, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.

This is where the dream of Kwame Nkrumah, of a real African Union, comes back; we are not talking about the current union which is just a puppet organization serving the interest of the Western powers. Kwame Nkrumah: African Visionary and Ghana’s First President. Currently, each country is negotiating individually, which may yield good or not so good results, if they do not have good negotiators or good mining lawyers in the case of lithium for instance. However, some would end up being taken advantage of just because they are not exposed to the new changes, don’t know, and could accept really low prices which may affect even their neighbors. Being United would insure good negotiations across the board learning from others, and also ensure that the multinationals respect the local governments and populations; and if they are kicked out of one country because of law or contract infringements, that they do not just run to another to perpetuate the cycle. This is what the AES is doing (The AES Creates a Joint Military Force), and all African countries should.