Harmony Agere

Zimbabwe recently became the first African nation to export locally-processed lithium. However, many Zimbabweans would either have not heard about this or dismiss it as a nothingburger because they have been conditioned by Western liberal thought to believe their one and main problem is "corruption" and that all focus should be shifted to “cleaning the country”. For context of how big of a deal this is, what Zimbabwe is doing is widely accepted by historians and economists alike as the primary way to develop a country by moving up the value-added ladder and export finished goods, not raw just materials. By moving from exporting raw ore to processed lithium, Zimbabwe is attempting to break the “resource curse” which has kept many a developing nation from capturing more of the value chain. The people obsessed with fighting corruption are effectively saying that industrialisation doesn’t matter unless the politics is perfect. But the thing is, historically, no nation, from the US in the 19th century to China in the 20th, waited “to fix corruption” before building an industrial base. They built the base, which then created the economic stability which reduced instances of corruption. If you wait for the “corruption” to end before you start processing your own minerals, you might find that even if by some miracle you were able to eliminate all malfeasance, there might be no minerals left to process and you’re just left with the standard neoliberal talking points. Some will say they can walk and chew by focusing on corruption *and* industrialisation. But this misses something extremely crucial about how a country’s capacity to act is a finite resource, and that when a developing nation is told it must reach “Scandinavian levels” of transparency before it can pursue ambitious industrial policy, it often results in institutional paralysis. This is because “fighting corruption” means using up resources on adding layers of bureaucracy, audits, and oversight committees which slows down decision-making, exhausts human capital by funneling the best minds towards compliance, auditing and accounting, instead of science and engineering. Because they’re inundated with neloliberal thought patterns, many developing nations fall into the trap of believing the myth that “clean” government leads to development. In reality, history usually shows the opposite, that it’s industrialisation that creates the conditions for a cleaner government. This may sound counterintuitive, but there are examples all over the place. For instance, the 19th-century US was so corrupt that the wealthiest among them were commonly known as Robber Barons who bought politicians by the dozen. Yet the country built the world’s most powerful industrial base during that exact period. Similarly, all the way in the Far East, South Korea and Taiwan had serious cronyism during their rapid growth phases. But they prioritised industrialisation, and the middle class that emerged from that growth eventually demanded better governance. And, of course, China, which is holding Zimbabwe’s hand through the lithium refining, lifted 800 million people out of poverty while navigating massive corruption scandals, but they focused on building the factories first. This may offend many people’s sensibilities, but from a cold, economic perspective, a “corrupt” state that successfully builds a lithium refinery is still far more productive than a “clean” state that remains a raw-material backyard for the West. As Professor Grieve Chelwa showed in his 2024 paper on the weaponisation of corruption, “anti-corruption” is often used as a tool to hollow out the state. If the state is labelled as inherently “corrupt”, the only “moral” solution offered is to outsource everything to the private sector or foreign NGOs. This effectively prevents the state from ever developing the muscles it needs to lead a national development strategy. In the case of Zimbabwe’s lithium plant, an “industrialiaation-first” approach treats development as a survival imperative. It acknowledges that while corruption is a disease that needs a cure, you don’t stop a starving man from eating just because his hands aren’t perfectly clean. So, for Africans, the beginning of wisdom is understanding that the push for “transparency” is used by foreign actors specifically to prevent African states from forming the kind of State-led development that allowed them to rise so quickly. No country in the Global North became wealthy by being honest first. They became wealthy by protecting their industries and moving up the value chain which raised the capacity to be honest. By processing lithium locally, Zimbabwe is attempting to jump from the raw material rung to the industrial rung. It is a messy, complicated process, and yes, money will likely be lost to corruption. But as Prof Chelwa shows in his paper, the greatest corruption is the neocolonial structure that tells Africa it isn’t “ready” to own its own value chain.

Nurses take to the dance floor to entertain the crowd ahead of President Mnangagwa's arrival at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals for the commissioning of refurbished Adlam House. 📹: Harmony Agere

One step further in facilitating African exports to China! Starting from 26 April, dried chilies from all 53 African countries having diplomatic relations with China are permitted to be exported to China under a regime of unified quarantine requirements. This eliminates the need to sign individual access protocols, thus accelerating quarantine approval processes for African dried chilies and promotes agricultural trade cooperation between China and Africa!