Lithium is an essential component of electric vehicle batteries, which are becoming more important as the world moves to a low-carbon energy future. Large deposits of lithium exist in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, the US, Australia, Portugal, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Ghana. Zimbabwe is the largest producer of lithium in Africa, and the ninth largest in the world.
The Zimbabwean government promotes mining to stimulate socio-economic development. But new lithium mining has had devastating environmental and social effects. One of them is that communities have been displaced from their ancestral land.
I am a social scientist who conducts research on social aspects of the transition to renewable energy and of mining. My latest research traces how 41 families in Buhera were displaced from their homes to make way for Zimbabwe’s third largest lithium mine, owned by China’s Sabi Star mining company.
