Zvigananda Loot US$400 Million Mineral Revenue – Eduzim News

By Business Reporter — Zimbabwe’s extractive sector is once again under scrutiny after revelations that the country may have lost up to US$400 million in mineral revenue through illicit and undeclared exports, exposing what critics describe as entrenched “zvigananda” looting networks operating within the mining value chain.

The country has reportedly haemorrhaged this revenue through the export of undeclared caesium and tantalum—high-value by-products smuggled out while concealed within lithium concentrates—before authorities moved to ban the export of raw minerals.

The revelations were made by Engineer Mudono, a lecturer at the National University of Science and Technology, who highlighted systemic leakages in Zimbabwe’s mining sector, long plagued by opacity, elite capture, and weak regulatory oversight.

Speaking at a breakfast meeting organised by the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA), Mudono detailed how critical minerals were exported without proper declaration or local beneficiation.

“If I use that as the basis of calculation, then I have a general approximation of the content within the concentrate. For caesium, 0.07 to 1.05 percent… that translates to around 8,512 metric tonnes from 1.52 million tonnes exported—worth about US$30 million,” he said.

“Then you go to tantalum… from that aspect, around US$400 million is what is within the content.”

The latest disclosure reinforces a long-standing pattern of revenue leakages in Zimbabwe’s mining sector, where allegations of corruption and elite-driven extraction deals have persisted for decades.

In 2016, former President Robert Mugabe shocked the nation by revealing that Zimbabwe had lost an estimated US$15 billion in diamond revenue from the Marange fields—an admission that laid bare the scale of illicit financial flows and opaque dealings involving politically connected elites and security-linked companies.

More recently, the investigative documentary Gold Mafia exposed how politically exposed persons, business elites, and international networks allegedly use Zimbabwe’s gold sector to launder money and siphon wealth. The probe pointed to a nexus between gold smugglers, government officials, and financial institutions, raising fresh concerns about the integrity of the country’s mineral governance systems.

Concerns have also intensified over the growing concentration of control in the gold sector among politically connected individuals, including associates and family members linked to President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Critics argue that such consolidation fuels a parallel economy where mineral wealth is diverted through informal channels, depriving the Treasury of much-needed foreign currency.

This pattern—where politically exposed elites dominate extraction, trading, and export chains—has entrenched a system in which mineral wealth benefits a narrow few, while the broader population sees little return.

Against this backdrop, Mudono has called for a decisive shift from exporting raw mineral concentrates to full-scale beneficiation, arguing that local processing is key to maximising value and plugging revenue leakages.

His findings lend empirical weight to the government’s decision to ban raw lithium exports on 25 February 2026, a move aimed at curbing smuggling and ensuring Zimbabwe captures greater value from its vast mineral resources.

However, analysts caution that policy shifts alone are insufficient without transparency, strong institutions, and the political will to dismantle entrenched patronage networks that continue to define the country’s extractive industries.

The reported US$400 million loss is therefore not an isolated incident, but part of a broader and deeply rooted system of resource leakage—one that continues to drain Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth while enriching a connected elite.

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