Zimbabwe targets 90 million tons of lithium as $300m Sandawana expansion accelerates

Zimbabwe’s state-owned Mutapa Energy Resources has secured $300 million from a consortium that includes Chinese investors to develop the Sandawana Lithium Mine, with ambitions to more than double the site’s known resource base to 90 million tons through further exploration.

The Mutapa Chief Executive Officer Innocent Rukweza confirmed the deal to Bloomberg, describing it as a “done deal,” though the specific members of the consortium have not been publicly disclosed. Earlier reports had placed Chinese firms Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and Tsingshan Holding Group in discussions with Mutapa over an investment package valued between $250 million and $300 million.

The financing follows Mutapa’s announcement of a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate — a globally recognised standard for reporting mineral resources — of 39.9 million tons at Sandawana’s Block A, grading an average of 1.39% lithium oxide.

Approximately 72% of that resource is classified as measured, the highest confidence category under the JORC framework, strengthening the technical case for large-scale investment.

The scale of the opportunity extends well beyond Block A. That section covers only around 30% of Sandawana’s approximately 3,800-hectare mining concession, leaving 70% of the site unexplored. Mutapa is targeting a resource increase to as much as 90 million tons as exploration advances across the broader concession.

The deal sits within a broader strategic push by Zimbabwe to extract greater value from its lithium endowment. The government has already moved to ban the export of raw lithium and plans to prohibit lithium concentrate exports from 2027, a policy designed to force downstream processing within the country rather than ceding value-added activity to importing nations — a model several African resource producers are increasingly adopting.

On production targets, Zimbabwe is aiming for three million metric tons of lithium output in 2026, up from 2.5 million metric tons in 2025. The Sandawana expansion is central to meeting those ambitions.

For international investors tracking Africa’s role in the global battery supply chain, Zimbabwe’s lithium sector is emerging as a significant variable.

The country holds some of the continent’s largest known lithium deposits, and the combination of state-backed development vehicles, Chinese capital, and export restriction policies is shaping a value chain model that other African mineral producers are watching closely.