Beijing Orders Expansion of Overseas Critical Mineral Reserve Reporting Amid U.S.-China Tensions

China is intensifying its efforts to secure critical mineral resources, fueling its competition with Washington in the global quest for essential materials. On Monday, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce rolled out new rules requiring Chinese mining companies operating overseas ...

Zimbabwe Set to Launch Second Chinese-run Lithium Processing Plant

Final testing is now underway at a new Chinese-run lithium processing facility in eastern Zimbabwe, around 150km east of Harare. When fully operational, the new plant will be able to produce 300 tonnes a day of lithium concentrates that will be sent ...

Weak EV Demand Prompts Chinese Lithium Miners to Cut Production

It wasn't that long ago that China's lithium miners were once impervious to the sharp drop in prices of the key battery metal, but apparently they, too, have their limits. Slowing EV demand at home and abroad combined with a surge ...

Zimbabwe Commissions Chinese-Built Lithium Plant

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially opened a new lithium processing facility aimed at moving the country up the mineral value chain. The $300 million plant, run by Bikita Minerals, a subsidiary of China’s state-owned Sinomine, will produce 480,000 tonnes of petalite and 300,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrates annually. ...

Lithium Sector Leads Big Increase in Chinese Investment into Zimbabwe

Licenses issued by the Zimbabwean government could lead to $2.79 billion in Chinese investment flowing into the country. The funding will mostly go to the mining and energy sector. Zimbabwe has one of the largest deposits of lithium in the world ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

China-Led Study Proposes Global Energy Network

A globally connected network of solar and wind energy could provide three times the global energy demand by 2050 at a lower cost than independent national power systems. This is the finding of a study led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in collaboration with researchers from the United States and Denmark.
The study focused on how areas with high solar and wind capacity (such as deserts) can be linked ...

Lithium Rush: The Risks and Rewards of a China-Led Commodity Boom for Latin America and the Caribbean’s Transition Materials

By Zara C. Albright At last week’s Belt and Road Forum, China announced the creation of the Green Investment and Finance Partnership (GIFP), part of the $100 billion in new financing for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), aimed at ...

Chinese Mining Company Launches Africa’s First-Ever Lithium Processing Facility in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe became the first country in Africa to process locally-mined lithium with the opening of a new Chinese-owned refining facility outside of the capital Harare. Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe, a unit of the Chinese mining giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, formally commissioned the ...

Advice for African Leaders on How to Manage Newfound Lithium Wealth in the Era of Great Power Competition

Lithium production in Africa is expected to jump fourfold in the next ten years as demand surges for the metal needed to build batteries for electric vehicles. While that may produce another resource boom in some countries, it also presents unique challenges, ...