Online Reporter
Lincoln Towindo, in HANGZHOU, China
Government will no longer approve single-mineral mines, with all future investments in the sector now required to include capacity to process multiple ores at source, Vice President Dr Constantino Chiwenga has said.
Addressing the Zimbabwe-China Business Forum here this morning, Dr Chiwenga said all future mining investment must include machinery capable of identifying, separating and processing the multiple mineral ores embedded in each deposit.
“We are no longer permitting isolated, single mining operations,” he said.
“We, therefore, encourage investors to bring in machinery capable of identifying and separating all embedded minerals.”
Dr Chiwenga said Zimbabwe ranked second globally in geographically concentrated strategic minerals, holding every primary input for the electric vehicle battery chain — lithium, nickel, graphite, manganese and cobalt — as well as copper, chrome, platinum group metals and rare earths used in artificial intelligence hardware.
He said the new mining model would require investors to look beyond individual minerals and develop operations capable of extracting the different mineral components contained in ore bodies.
The approach, he said, would be complemented by Special Economic Zones and industrial parks where mineral processing and manufacturing could take place.
“Within this premise, we invite investment in Special Economic Zones and industrial parks anchored on integrated manufacturing,” he said.
“We call for the establishment of upstream and downstream value-chain industries across sectors in these Special Economic Zones.”
The same value-addition philosophy, he added, should be applied to agriculture, where Zimbabwe has significant potential for agro-processing.
He singled out tobacco, saying the country was Africa’s largest tobacco producer but continued to export the bulk of its crop as raw leaf.
“Zimbabwe is Africa’s largest tobacco producer, yet exports 90 percent as raw leaf,” said VP Chiwenga.
“We therefore invite investments in tobacco value addition at source, moving through the value chain from cutting, blending, manufacturing and packaging.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Chiwenga held a bilateral meeting with Sany Group vice president Mr Roger Guo on the sidelines of the forum.
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Guo said Sany viewed Zimbabwe as a potentially lucrative market and a gateway to the wider African market.
Dr Chiwenga also met China Railway 25th Bureau Group Co general manager Mr Cheng ZhiQing.
The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), one of China’s two railway construction giants and a Fortune Global 500 company, specialising in railway, highway, bridge and tunnel construction, as well as municipal and housing projects.
The Vice President later toured the Hangzhou City Brain Operation Command Centre, an artificial intelligence-powered urban management platform that uses big data to monitor and control city operations in real time, including traffic flow, public safety and emergency response.
He later visited the headquarters of Alibaba, the Chinese multinational technology giant and one of the world’s largest e-commerce and cloud computing companies, founded by billionaire Jack Ma.
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