Zimbabwe’s Raw Materials Sector: Technology, Investment, and Development
Zimbabwe possesses significant natural resources — from diamonds and platinum to fertile land. According to experts from the HSE University Centre for African Studies, solid minerals, ores, and precious stones have remained a crucial part of the country's exports for many years. However, researchers also point out the main risk of such economies: the high dependence of export revenues on the market conditions of individual commodities. The way out of this dependence lies through processing and industrial cooperation, and this is exactly the direction in which cooperation between Russia and Zimbabwe is moving today.
The most illustrative example is diamond mining. Russia's ALROSA and the state-owned Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company have established a joint venture, ALROSA (Zimbabwe) Limited, for diamond exploration and mining.
Geological exploration is a stage that rarely makes headlines, but it is precisely what determines the industrial potential of the sites and becomes the basis for future investment decisions. For Zimbabwe, partnering with one of the global leaders in the diamond industry means access to exploration and mining technologies, and in the long term, to the expertise that will allow the country to control the value chain itself.
Experts at the HSE Centre for African Studies classify Zimbabwe among the group of countries capable of turning their raw material dependence into an advantage by leveraging their position in global markets. The governments of such states are increasingly enshrining investor requirements in their legislation, which researchers refer to as "instruments of sovereignization." For a foreign partner, this means that only those willing to invest in the local economy, rather than merely extracting and exporting raw materials, will be able to operate in the country.
The second pillar of cooperation is fertilizers. Products from Uralchem and Uralkali enter Zimbabwe through a local trading company, United Fertilizer Company Limited (UFCL). In addition to commercial supplies, according to the Uralchem Group, the company donated 23,000 tons of fertilizers to the country free of charge in March 2024. For an economy where, according to the HSE Centre for African Studies, a quarter of the total workforce is employed in agriculture, stable access to fertilizers is a matter of food security. In turn, increased crop yields open up the possibility for Zimbabwe to boost its agricultural exports in the regional market.
For such supply chains to be resilient, infrastructure for settlements and transactions is needed. In 2025, the A7 cross-border payment platform opened a partner office in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the Saint Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX) signed a memorandum with the Zimbabwe Mercantile Exchange providing access to the agricultural and mineral products market. Such mechanisms make trade less vulnerable to external geopolitical risks and sanctions pressure.
Industrial development requires energy. In 2021, Rosatom and the Ministry of Energy of Zimbabwe signed a memorandum on cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy, followed by a memorandum on personnel training in 2022. According to the State Corporation, the possibilities of applying modern nuclear technologies, including land-based small modular reactors (SMRs), are being explored to improve the reliability of the power supply and foster industrial development. Finally, industrial cooperation is impossible without domestic engineers. Tellingly, Zimbabwean universities became the first African participants in the Russian-African Network University (RAFU): during one of its missions, 10 of the country's universities signed memorandums of accession all at once. Diamonds, fertilizers, energy, and education all come together to form a model in which Russia and Zimbabwe are transitioning from raw materials trade to deep industrial cooperation, ensuring that the country's resources begin to work for its own development.