Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has a huge and highly diversified mineral resource base dominated by prominent geological features, namely, an expansive craton, widespread greenstone belts (also known as gold belts), the famous Great Dyke, Precambrian and Karoo basins and metamorphic belts. As a result of its good geology, the country has huge mineral potential characterised by about 60 economic minerals whose commercial profitability has been proven. The Great Dyke is a layered igneous complex extending north-south for about 550 km. The Great Dyke plays host to the world’s largest high-grade chromite resource base. Zimbabwe has the world’s second-largest resource of the platinum group of metals as well as significant reserves of copper and nickel.

With rock ages spanning a period of more than 3 billion years, Zimbabwe’s heterogeneous geological environment is favourable to occurrences of a variety of minerals and ore bodies. There are over 4 000 recorded gold deposits, nearly all of them located on ancient workings. The country remains under-explored to discover new deposits as well as realising the full potential of known deposits. More than 90% of gold deposits in Zimbabwe are associated with greenstone belts which are some of the richest and comparable to those in some leading gold producing countries in the world like Australia, South Africa and Canada.