• Mnangagwa pledges to accelerate regional beneficiation and cross-border industrial development under Zimbabwe’s COMESA chairmanship
• Zimbabwe’s local mineral-processing requirements create important questions about how production can be distributed among regional economies
• A new assessment of the DRC–Zambia battery initiative identifies infrastructure, regulatory and investment constraints facing regional mineral value chains

Harare – Zimbabwe’s ambition to develop regional mineral-processing industries faces a significant policy test after President Emmerson Mnangagwa committed the country’s COMESA chairmanship to accelerating beneficiation and cross-border industrial investment, while reaffirming the Government’s preference for processing mineral resources within the countries where they are extracted.

Speaking during his acceptance of the COMESA Authority chairmanship in Harare on Thursday, Mnangagwa identified value addition, regional industrialisation and participation in cross-border value chains among Zimbabwe’s priorities for 2026 to 2027. He cited Zimbabwe’s domestic mineral-processing policies as evidence of the economic benefits associated with retaining more value from natural resources.

The approach brings two industrial objectives into closer examination. National beneficiation requirements seek to retain processing expenditure, employment and investment within producing economies. Regional value chains allow different countries to specialise in particular production stages, using shared infrastructure, markets and technical capabilities to achieve commercial scale.

For mineral producers and investors, the relationship between these objectives determines where processing plants can be located, how intermediate products move across borders and which economies capture the associated industrial returns.

Zimbabwe has already adopted a more restrictive approach to lithium exports. Government intends to prohibit ordinary exports of lithium concentrate from January 2027, encouraging mining companies to convert material into higher-value products domestically. The policy has supported investment in chemical-processing facilities, although major projects remain under construction and existing operational capacity is largely committed to individual producers.

The country generated US$2.159 billion from lithium exports in the nine months to September 2026, with spodumene concentrate contributing US$1.812 billion, approximately 84% of the total. Lithium sulphate contributed US$190.52 million, establishing a commercial export stream from domestic chemical processing.

These figures demonstrate the scale of the industry’s existing reliance on concentrate sales. They also establish the financial importance of designing a processing transition that maintains production, investment and access to international markets. Higher realised spodumene prices contributed substantially to the increase in mineral receipts, limiting the extent to which revenue growth can independently demonstrate additional value retained through beneficiation.

The regional challenge concerns the location of the next processing stage. A Zimbabwean producer supplying concentrate to a chemical refinery in another COMESA country would participate in a regional industrial value chain. However, that arrangement would require an export route consistent with Zimbabwe’s domestic processing requirements. A producer exporting lithium sulphate for further regional conversion would face a different regulatory and commercial position because an additional processing stage would already have taken place locally.

Mnangagwa did not propose a COMESA-wide mineral export ban or announce common regional processing rules. His commitment instead establishes the need for member states to coordinate national industrial policies if mineral-processing investments are to support production networks extending across several countries.

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia provide a relevant regional example. The two COMESA members have been developing a joint battery value-chain initiative, including proposed special economic zones at Musompo in the DRC and Ndola in Zambia. Their cooperation seeks to use complementary mineral resources and industrial capabilities to attract investment into battery-related manufacturing.

An assessment published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development on 6 October 2026 found that both countries face important constraints in developing competitive battery industries. Unreliable electricity supplies, logistics bottlenecks, regulatory complexity and weaknesses in industrial skills remain obstacles to attracting and sustaining investment.

The research also established that neither country independently possesses the full combination of minerals, industrial capabilities and market scale required to support an integrated battery supply chain. It recommended wider cooperation with neighbouring economies, stronger industrial policy coordination and improvements in infrastructure.

This creates a practical opportunity for Zimbabwe, whose lithium resources could complement the DRC’s cobalt industry and Zambia’s copper production. A regional manufacturing network could distribute different processing stages according to mineral availability, energy costs, technical capacity and access to customers.

However, the commercial viability of such arrangements depends on policy compatibility. Investors require certainty over the movement of intermediate mineral products, licensing requirements, product standards and the treatment of materials processed across national borders.

COMESA’s existing free-trade framework provides preferential market access for qualifying goods, supported by rules of origin that determine eligibility. These arrangements facilitate regional trade but do not automatically remove national export restrictions or guarantee unrestricted movement of every mineral product.

Differences in beneficiation requirements could therefore complicate the development of shared processing facilities. If neighbouring countries independently require similar minerals to undergo particular processing stages before export, companies may need to duplicate investments that could otherwise serve several markets from a single competitively located facility.

The financial consequences are substantial for capital-intensive mineral conversion projects. Chemical processing requires reliable electricity, water, specialised equipment, technical labour and access to reagents. Replicating facilities across several markets could increase capital requirements and reduce plant utilisation where available feedstock cannot support operations at commercial scale.

Conversely, concentrating processing capacity in a small number of regional industrial hubs would require agreements on how participating countries benefit from the resulting investment. Producing economies would need to evaluate revenue from mineral sales, taxes, royalties, transport services and local procurement against employment and industrial activity generated at processing locations elsewhere in the region.

Zimbabwe’s planned cross-border agro and industrial parks could provide a framework for these discussions. Mnangagwa committed his chairmanship to championing such initiatives alongside supply-chain harmonisation and industrial development. His acceptance speech, however, did not identify new mineral-processing parks, investment commitments or binding arrangements for allocating production activities among member states.

Financing will also influence the eventual industrial structure. Mnangagwa called for affordable, predictable and long-term capital for transport, energy and digital infrastructure, acknowledging that high borrowing costs and debt burdens constrain regional development. Mineral-processing investments will require commercially viable projects supported by sufficient feedstock, dependable infrastructure and credible market-access arrangements.

COMESA’s Medium-Term Strategic Plan for 2026 to 2030 identifies productive integration and infrastructure connectivity among its principal priorities. Zimbabwe’s leadership can use that framework to advance coordination between mining regulations, industrial investment policies and cross-border trade procedures.

A practical starting point would be identifying mineral-processing stages that can operate competitively within individual member states and those that could benefit from shared regional capacity. Such an assessment would need to consider existing plants, available minerals, electricity costs, transport links, export requirements and the distribution of economic returns.

The implementation test for Zimbabwe’s chairmanship will be the emergence of bankable cross-border processing projects, agreements governing intermediate-product trade and measurable investment in complementary industrial activities.

Zimbabwe’s domestic beneficiation programme has already begun changing the composition of its mineral exports. Extending that approach into regional industrial production will require member states to determine where processing creates the greatest economic value and how those benefits can be retained across participating economies. Those decisions will shape COMESA’s ability to convert its mineral resources into competitive regional industries.

Equity Axis News