Zimbabwe can tax the profits from mining AND the profits from processing. Additionally, doing it locally means that Zimbabwean workers get the work, and that the knowhow for doing it becomes local knowledge. Furthermore, this is merely a stepping stone, as Zimbabwe plans to develop a domestic industry for manufacturing batteries with this processed lithium. If you’ve ever seen Rules for Rulers by CGP Grey, you’ll be familiar with the concept that the more a national economy depends on raw resources, the more prone it is to exploitation and oppression, whereas the more a national economy depends on advanced manufacturing, the harder it is for a dictator to exploit, since it means national prosperity depends on a highly-educated workforce, which is antithetical to how brutal dictatorships work.

This isn’t a Chinese initiative. Zimbabwe has banned the export of raw lithium, meaning that Chinese companies were forced to move processing here. There’s no doubt that China wants to exploit Africa as much as it can, but Zimbabwe at least has figured out how to prevent itself from getting completely taken advantage of, and is leveraging its position to turn itself into a more advanced economy.