Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe enters 2026 with a sharply improving but still fragile macro picture. Growth slumped to 1.7% in 2024 under drought, then rebounded to an estimated ~7.6% in 2025 (AfDB) on a 24% agricultural recovery, with the AfDB forecasting ~4.3% for 2026. ZiG inflation, which peaked near 95.8% in mid-2025, decelerated dramatically to 19.0% by November 2025, allowing single-digit local-currency inflation to come into view in early 2026 — though the Reserve Bank still holds its policy rate at 35%, among the world's highest. Nominal GDP, revised up ~40% after a 2024 rebasing, sits near $38bn.

The thesis is hard-asset minerals at the center of the energy transition. Zimbabwe holds Africa's largest lithium reserves and exported 1.13m tonnes of spodumene concentrate in 2025, drawing major Chinese capital — Sinomine's Bikita, Huayou's Arcadia, Chengxin's Sabi Star — with two large lithium-sulphate plants due to start through 2026. Gold, the top forex earner, hit a record 46.7 tonnes in 2025, and the country runs platinum (Zimplats, Mimosa, Unki) and a record $1.2bn tobacco crop. The distinctiveness is a beneficiation-forced model: a ban on exporting raw lithium concentrate (slated for 2027) is pushing value-addition onshore as the government targets a $12bn mining industry under Vision 2030.

The defining risk is institutional and monetary confidence. The ZiG, launched in April 2024, was devalued ~43% by September 2024 and lost most of its parallel-market value within a year, leaving roughly 70% of transactions still in US dollars. Compounding this is a ~$21bn external debt-and-arrears overhang that blocks fresh IFI lending (an AfDB-led arrears-clearance process under Adesina and Chissano is underway but slow), US Magnitsky sanctions on President Mnangagwa, a contested push to extend his term to 2030, and a lithium price collapse that cut export value despite record volumes.