By Elishamai A. Ziumbwa
The global race for minerals like lithium, cobalt, and gold is accelerating but at a steep cost to some of Southern Africa’s most vulnerable communities.
In an interview with 263chat, social justice advocacy group Southern Africa Trust (Zimbabwe) country manager Janet Zhou said the rush for critical minerals is fueling a dangerous extraction model that leaves women, persons with disabilities, and entire communities out in the cold.
Zhou said local women are being evicted from their land without consent losing their livelihoods built on farming and community-based labor.
“Persons with disabilities are excluded at every stage from community consultations to compensation frameworks, creating deeper layers of invisibility,” she said.
According to Zhou, many of the regions where this mineral wealth lies have become virtual tax havens for foreign mining companies offering little to no benefit to the people who actually live there.
“There are cases in this regard where civil society and communities have opted for strategic litigation, though without success,” Zhou said.
She didn’t hold back in criticizing the current system calling it outright exploitation.
“We must name this for what it is in terms of the current extraction it is resource plunder that prioritises corporate profit over people and the planet,” Zhou said.
But it’s not all doom and gloom as Zhou pointed to the Just Transition framework—a policy approach that could support social justice and better outcomes for women and the environment.
She also spotlighted grassroots movements like the Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI) an annual gathering in South Africa that amplifies the voices of communities, women and youth affected by extractive industries.
Zhou said these forums are becoming key spaces to challenge corporate power and connect local struggles to wider policy discussions.
Meanwhile, she said financial secrecy, trade mispricing, and illicit flows are draining Africa’s mineral wealth, with civil society efforts being further hampered by restrictive laws like Zimbabwe’s Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Act.
“It is essential to challenge extractivist economic models that render us victims of an unyielding profit-driven race to the bottom. We shall advocate for alternative and feminist models that decolonise mining supply and value chains,” Zhou said.
