Introduction

As the global race for critical minerals and rare earth metals accelerates, local communities’ vulnerability to multiple forms of exploitation, displacement and environmental degradation has increased tenfold. In Zimbabwe, a country with the largest deposit of lithium in Africa, and fifth-largest deposit of lithium globally,[1] Chinese companies have consolidated their hegemony in the country’s lithium landscape. As such, Zimbabwe is one of the key frontiers of lithium mining extraction by China’s mineral companies, as well as other multinational mining corporations.[2] Over the past few months, I conducted fieldwork amongst the lithium bearing communities in Bikita in Southeast Zimbabwe to understand their experiences with mining companies, and their perceptions of lithium mining expansion by China’s Sinomine mining company operating in Bikita. Bikita’s Minerals’ Sinomine has the largest known lithium deposits in Zimbabwe and has been operating since 1950.[3]

The Just Energy Transition and Lithium Boom in Zimbabwe

The global rush for lithium, to meet the growing demand for lithium-ion batteries and the electric vehicle production industry, has placed Zimbabwe in a strategic position. As Africa’s leading producer of lithium,[4] Zimbabwe has experienced the consequences and effects of the skyrocketing surge in lithium mining investments. In 2024, Zimbabwe produced an estimated 22, 000 metric tonnes of lithium, accounting for about 9.2% of global lithium production.[5] Many of these investments have come from China, undoubtedly the country’s biggest player in the lithium sector. China’s dominance in the Zimbabwean lithium sector is demonstrated by its ownership of the country’s largest and oldest lithium mine, Bikita Minerals, bought in 2022 by Sinomine Resource Group; an Arcadia lithium mine owned by Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt; Sabi Star, which is owned by Chengxin Lithium Group; Kamativi mine, controlled by Yahua Group; the Sandawana mine, where the Chinese companies, Huayou Cobalt and Tsingshan Holding have a stake; and is also a strategic partner in Zulu lithium. According to Reuters, China has invested more than USD 2 billion in Zimbabwe’s lithium sector since 2021,[6] making it the biggest foreign investor in the lithium mining industry of the country. 

Bikita Minerals

Bikita Minerals is located about 70 km from the city of Masvingo, along the Masvingo-Mutare expressway. It is the country’s largest and oldest lithium mine. The first mineral claims were staked at Bikita Minerals around 1911, after the Koestlich Brothers discovered tin deposits in the Bikita area (Gogodo 2021).[7] During this time, tin mining was predominantly alluvial. Around the 1950s, the initial commercial extraction of lithium made Bikita Minerals one of the earliest lithium mine producers globally. Over the years, the ownership of Bikita Minerals has changed several times. In 2022, Sinomine Resource Group acquired Bikita Minerals from African Minerals Limited and its consortium of partners for approximately USD 180 million. The mine takeover of Bikita Minerals by Sinomine led to accelerated expansion of mining activities and operations. While this expansion came with promises of jobs, most of them are under the monopoly of Chinese expatriates and former city-dwellers or elite, rather than people from the local community.

Forced Displacements

The expansion of mining activities and operations at Bikita Minerals has led to the displacement of some families living close to the mine.[8] This displacement experienced by the local people in Bikita is multifaceted, going beyond being physically uprooted from their ancestral lands. As in any other natural resource-rich community, residents complain that they are displaced with little or no compensation from the mineral companies responsible for extracting lithium from their land. During my fieldwork, some of my respondents complained that, although they had not been physically displaced, their livelihoods were severely affected by the expansion of mining activities, including the loss of their farming and grazing land. The government and Sinomine use a repertoire of strategies to displace families, including eviction from their ancestral lands. They also deploy “lawfare,” where the law is invoked to displace families and accusing the villagers of deliberately settling on land designated for the mine airstrip. Similarly, the mining companies indirectly displace residents through degradation and pollution from mining operations, which compel villagers to relocate.

The loss of land to mining expansion and activities exacerbates the livelihoods and food insecurity of many families living in or around mining areas. This resonates with arguments made in earlier studies, showing that the erosion of productive livelihood assets and resources tends to (re)produce impoverishment in mining host communities.[9] In Bikita, this loss of productive assets and resources created new forms of vulnerability and precarity while simultaneously intensifying existential challenges. My findings echo Kemp’s[10] assertions that displacement should be conceived as the material production of poverty through loss of productive resources, such as land. For instance, in an interview, one of my interlocutors lamented:

We have lost our fields and grazing land, and some areas have been marked as no-go areas, and if you are found there then you are regarded as trespassing, but that is where we used to get our firewood, wild fruits, and other essential resources. Some of our people have been told that they will be relocated to pave the way for mine expansion (Interview, Amos).

This enclosure of the commons and loss of productive land was echoed by many of my interlocutors, who reported that their fishing and farming-based livelihoods have been affected by the expansion of extractive activities at the Bikita Minerals mine. Indeed, many of my interlocutors living close to the mine asserted that they are living in fear of potential future displacement due to the continued expansion of mining operations. Consequently, displacement, in this case, becomes a temporal and protracted existential threat for many local villagers in Bikita. This gives credence to arguments made by scholars such as Askland, who asserted that in mining economies, local people can be ‘displaced in place,’[11] a scenario where people remain geographically rooted in place, but their relationship to the space is reconfigured in ways that make hitherto familiar terrains ‘unfamiliar’; strange and risky. In Bikita, Sinomine regularly digs trenches, erects fences, and cuts down trees in its expansion drive, sometimes without consulting or informing the local people. Therefore, for some of the local people in Bikita, displacement is framed as experiential rather than corporeal mobility. This is akin to what some scholars’ frame as environmental displacement.[12]

Lithium Extraction and Water Crisis

The expansion of mining activities at Bikita Minerals also created a water crisis for the local community, who depended on water from Matezva dam for consumption, livestock rearing, irrigation, and other agricultural-related activities. During interviews, my research participants complained that Sinomine was extracting much more water from the land, leaving very little for their irrigation schemes. The expansion of mining activities tripled water extraction and usage by Sinomine,creating a serious water crisis and food insecurity for the local community.

Writing in the Mail and Guardian, Tatenda Chitagu asserts that Sinomine has been accused of consuming large volumes of water and also of contaminating water from the Matezva dam by discharging effluent chemicals and dam tailings.[13] The Matezva dam is the main source of water for the community.[14] Since the Bikita community is predominantly semi-arid and many families depend on the Matezva dam which is the lifeblood of the local farming-based economy. The decline in water levels due to increased mining activities and the contamination of water resources both pose an existential threat to many families in the host community. Indeed, while asking some participants about the value of lithium as a critical mineral for the local community, one of my interlocutors brazenly declared:

Critical to who? Not critical for me, all I see is continuous suffering. We have not benefited much from the mining of lithium for decades now, all we remain with are cracked houses, dust and mine waste.

The contamination of the community’s main water source can be read as some form of necropolitical practice by the mining companies, leading to slow death. Some participants reported losing their livestock after drinking contaminated water. Although they reported this to both Sinomine and state authorities, they hardly received any compensation. Similarly, some local irrigation farmers noted their health was negatively impacted by handling contaminated water. They also reported a decline in crop yields, threatening their livelihood and food security.

While lithium is regarded as a critical mineral for the just energy transition, for local villagers in Bikita, it is associated with green dispossession, land degradation, and extreme suffering because of environmental and physical displacement and resource deprivation.

Broken Houses and Promises

While I deploy the image and idea of a ‘broken house’ as a metaphor, I also deploy it literally. During transect walks in Bikita Fashu and other surrounding communities close to Bikita Minerals mine, I observed how many houses showed visible cracks. Upon asking about these cracks, some of my interlocutors explained they were caused by the mining company’s regular blasting. The hard rock lithium deposits at Bikita Minerals require everyday use of explosives for blasting, whose frequency most of my interlocutors bemoaned. Complaints about the increase in blasting reverberated in most of my interviews and informal conversations with the people of Bikita.

“They used to share a timetable for blasting; we used to know what time blasting happens and it used to be in the afternoon, but now after the Chinese took over, blasting has increased, and we are not given the time schedule, sometimes you hear the blast at night or very early in the morning,” complained one of my interlocutors.

For some of my respondents, the cracked walls of houses signify broken promises by mining companies which had for decades assured inhabitants of mining communities of a better future, one with decent jobs and income-generating projects. Instead, residents found themselves in abject poverty despite their land possessing a mineral regarded as critical for the ‘just energy transition.’ For residents, the extractive practices in the community have been an injustice to them, such as the acceleration of environmental degradation after the Chinese takeover of Bikita Minerals. While the local political elites from the ruling ZANU-PF party have benefited from the extraction of minerals (such as lithium) through kickbacks, gifts, and shares,[15] the local people bear the burden of noise, air, and water pollution, as well as various forms of dispossessions and displacement.[16] Community members have protested violations of employment quotas, workplace safety, and labour rights.[17] However, these have been consistently crushed by the repressive state apparatus.

Although critical minerals have been positioned as an indispensable part of advancing climate action and the just energy transition, this framing tends to obfuscate the socio-economic and environmental injustices suffered by communities located at sites of extraction, such as Bikita. Instead of being the primary beneficiaries of the just energy transition, local communities bear the brunt of the discontent of this transition, including pollution, displacement, and erosion of livelihood assets. This reality lays bare the inherent contradictions in the just energy transition discourse. While the just energy transition seeks to promote sustainability at a global level, it reproduces historical patterns of dispossession, resource exploitation, and marginalization of local communities. As such, a genuine and non-ironic ‘just energy transition’ should extend beyond decarbonization, foregrounding redistributive equity and justice for communities already living where critical minerals are extracted.

Endnotes

  1. Ishabangu, N. and Chikumbu,T. Zimbabwe’s Lithium Boom and Chinese Investment: Navigating Opportunity and Risky in the Energy Transition Chain. Transparency International’s Accountable Mining Programme.
  2. https://www.theafricareport.com/288288/china-dominates-scramble-for-zimbabwes-lithium/
  3. https://ejatlas.org/conflict/bikita
  4. Maduna, K.2026. Increased Chinese investments in Zimbabwe’s lithium megaprojects: Energy colonialism, geopolitics and new patterns of accumulation in Africa’s critical minerals, Review of African Political Economy, Vaidyanathan, V.2026. The Development dilemma of critical minerals: Zimbabwe’s lithium and China, Politics.
  5. Fatoki, O et al. 2025. Review of Recent Advances in Lithium-Ion Batteries: Sources, Extraction Methods, and Industrial Uses, Batteries, 11(12), 433; https://doi.org/10.3390/batteries11120433
  6. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/zimbabwe-exploring-minerals-backed-deals-with-china-fund-infrastructure-minister-2026-06-24/
  7. Gogodo, A.S.2021. A Review of the Geology, Mineralisation, and Structural controls on the emplacement of the Bikita LCT Pegmatites, Masvingo Greenstone Belt, Zimbabwe Craton. Wits University.
  8. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/zimbabwe-lithium-mining-leaves-behind-displaced-families-poisoned-rivers-and-promises-as-hollow-as-the-mines-themselves-investigation-reveals/
  9. Cernea, M.M.1995.  Understanding and preventing impoverishment from displacement: Reflections on the state of knowledge, Journal of Refugee Studies, 8(3), 245-264. Gukurume, S. And Tombindo, F.2023. Mining-induced displacement and livelihood resilience: The case of Marange, Zimbabwe, The Extractive Industries and Society.
  10. Kemp, D; Owen, J.R. and Collins, N.2017. Global perspectives on the state of resettlement practice in mining, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 35 (1), 22-33.
  11. Askland, H.H., 2018. A dying village: mining and the experiential condition of displacement. The Extractive Industries and Society, 5(2), pp.230-236.
  12. Lunstrum, E. Bose, P. and Zalik, A. 2016. Environmental displacement: the common ground of climate change, extraction and conservation, AREA, 48.2, 130–133. See also, Gukurume, S., 2026. Mining-induced displacements and the ontological (in) security of local communities: Experiences of the Chiadzwa people in Zimbabwe. The Extractive Industries and Society, 25, p.101781.
  13. https://www.business-humanrights.org/fr/latest-news/zimbabwe-bikita-mineral-accused-of-polluting-water-sources-drawing-unsustainably-large-volumes-of-water-from-a-dam-that-is-the-lifeline-of-local-residents-incl-co-comments/
  14. https://mg.co.za/the-green-guardian/2024-05-23-zimbabwe-s-lithium-liability/
  15. See Vaidyanathan, V.2026. The Development Dilemma of Critical Minerals.
  16. “Bikita Mineral Expansion Sparks Community Disputes in Zimbabwe, “ China Global South Project, July 28, 2025. https://africamining.chinaglobalsouth.com/resources/articles/bikita-minerals-expansion-sparks-community-disputes-in-zimbabwe
  17. https://enviropresszim.com/bikita-minerals-has-reneged-on-job-quota-commitments-bikita-youths-complain/