Resource Nationalism

On the 10 June 2025, the Zimbabwean government announced that it would ban the export of lithium concentrate, with the ban is scheduled to take effect from January 2027. Zimbabwe, Africa’s largest lithium producer, has positioned lithium at the centre of its economic transformation agenda as global demand for battery minerals accelerates due to the expansion of electric vehicles and renewable energy storage technologies. This update examines Zimbabwe’s evolving lithium policy as the government seeks to maximise national benefits through export bans and domestic beneficiation requirements. It analyses the rationale, timelines and political economy of the proposed bans on lithium ore and concentrate exports, while interrogating the ownership structures of dominant Chinese firms such as Sinomine and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.

Guinea occupies a structurally significant position in the global minerals economy as the world’s largest holder of bauxite reserves and second leading producer of the ore, which is indispensable for aluminium production and increasingly recognised as strategically important to global industrial supply chains. This update examines Guinea’s intensifying resource nationalism in the global bauxite sector, focusing on the revocation of mining licences, the resulting high-value international arbitration claims, and the government’s planned legal defence. It situates these developments within broader African debates on bauxite’s strategic importance, mineral governance, and efforts to reclaim sovereign control and value from critical raw materials.

Over the last decade, and especially in the mining sector, African state actors have begun to denounce unequal mining contracts, and are increasingly reviewing mining contracts accordingly. While African host states are seemingly taking it upon themselves to remedy real and perceived imbalances vis-à-vis investors in their mining contracts, a key question remains what structural reasons have led to such imbalances in the first place, and whose responsibility it is to address these structural issues: host states, investors, home states, international financial institutions, or all the above? This brief discussion contextualizes how responsibilities to redress unequal mining contracts may be shared.