Mining

Mining is the export economy. It earns most of the country's foreign currency, and its fortunes are set largely offshore — by the gold price, by the lithium cycle, and by PGM demand that is structurally exposed to the shift away from internal combustion. Domestic policy determines how much of that revenue is retained, not how much is earned.

1. 01

   Formal gold deliveries understate output; leakage outside official channels is persistent and widely documented.

2. 02

   Lithium export value tracks the global price cycle far more closely than domestic volume.

3. 03

   Power availability, not ore, is the binding constraint on processing capacity.

4. 04

   Export retention rules change with limited notice and materially alter project economics.

• Chamber of Mines

  Source for mining production and outlook surveys. Membership-based, and gold figures in particular understate output that leaves the country outside formal channels. Treated as a floor on production, not a total.

• RBZ

  Source for monetary policy decisions, official exchange rates, reserve money and remittance inflows. The RBZ is both the publisher of the official rate and a participant in the market that rate describes; ZIX therefore treats official FX data as a policy statement as much as a measurement, and pairs it with market readings wherever a verifiable one exists.

• World Bank

  Primary source for internationally comparable macro series. WDI figures for Zimbabwe are compiled from national accounts supplied by ZIMSTAT and the RBZ, so they inherit those bodies' limitations; the World Bank's contribution is consistency of method across countries and years, not independent measurement. Series are pulled live from the WDI API and carry the vintage the API reports.

• Sector deep-dive13 Sept 2026

  From rock to battery: Zimbabwe's bet on moving lithium up the value chain

  Africa's largest lithium producer is testing whether a resource boom can become an industrial one.

• Investor briefing13 Sept 2026

  What Karo's Oversubscribed Bond Says About Zimbabwe's Investment Case

  The demand behind a $300 million bond deal is a sharper signal for frontier-market mining than the rate that priced it.

• Sector deep-dive30 Jun 2026

  Zimbabwe's lithium moment, priced honestly

  Export value tripled and then fell by a third. Almost none of that was about Zimbabwe. What the price cycle hides, and what it reveals about the beneficiation strategy.

• Investor briefing28 Jul 2026

  What changed this quarter, and what it means for allocation

  Four developments worth repricing around, and three that got attention but should not change anyone's model.

• Explainer20 May 2026

  A practical guide to ZIDA and investment licensing

  What the one-stop shop actually does, which approvals sit outside it, and where timelines realistically land.

• Sector deep-dive18 Apr 2026

  Power, not policy, is the binding constraint on manufacturing

  Industry surveys have said the same thing for a decade. The measured electricity access rate does not capture it, because it counts connections rather than supply.