Dear Zimbabwe,

The ground beneath you has found a new price. In the first six months of 2026 you exported $782 million of lithium products, up from $237 million a year earlier, as reported by the finance minister. You have required more of it to be processed at home before it leaves. Most of the electricity you generate, 87.5 percent in 2021, comes from renewable sources, from Kariba and the Zambezi.

The lithium earns. The clinic, the tap and the wage have not yet caught up. Health service coverage stands at 59 on the World Health Organization index. In the last national survey, in 2019, 38.3 percent of you lived below the poverty line. Two in three of you have basic drinking water and six in ten have electricity. In 2022, more than half of city dwellers lived in slums.

“The world needs your lithium for its batteries. Let it charge the Living Line at home first.”

Remittances from family abroad equal 8.5 percent of your economy, a sign of how much work your people find outside the country. The World Bank operations on record are small health grants. The largest flows of capital into Zimbabwe today are not development finance at all: they are the mining investments behind the lithium boom.

A mining boom is the moment to decide where its revenue goes. Each tonne exported can carry a share pledged to water, care and homes, and each processing plant can be sited to bring power and work to the towns around it. The world needs your lithium for its batteries. Let it charge the Living Line at home first.