Zimbabwe rejected US aid. Sovereignty above all

Zimbabwe rejected a $360 million offer of US health care support after President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the US linked it to access to critical minerals, which he saw as a threat to national sovereignty.

Diplomatic sources cited by ZimLive said that Mnangagwa ordered the talks to be broken off because he did not agree to the US demands to provide them with health data of Zimbabweans along with their biological samples. The president considered it “sensitive intelligence.” He also stated that he could not accept the provisions linking the agreement with access to his country's critical mineral resources.

– When financial aid is conditional on concessions that concern national security, data sovereignty or access to strategic resources, it fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship from a partnership to an unequal exchange. We cannot accept this, government spokesman Nick Mangwana explained his president's position on Wednesday.

The United States disagreed with these allegations, and the U.S. Embassy in Harare reported that the proposed deal was “the largest potential health investment in Zimbabwe by any international sponsor,” recalling that the U.S. has provided more than $1.9 billion in health financing to Zimbabwe over the past two decades.

At the beginning of February, Mnangagwa assured that Zimbabwe, in the context of mineral extraction, is ready to cooperate with all countries, and “the US interest in these raw materials is a potential opportunity for both countries.”

This was a reaction to the announcement by the Donald Trump administration that the United States was creating a fund of USD 12 billion intended to acquire critical minerals in order to become independent from supplies from China. The list of countries with which Washington intended to hold talks on this matter also included Zimbabwe, rich in, among others, lithium, platinum, chromium, nickel and gold.

Political analyst Tembo Olonga, who is in exile in Zambia, told PAP by phone that the promising talks between Zimbabwe and the United States were probably broken off due to excessive demands from President Mnangagwa, who would primarily like Washington to lift sanctions on him and his closest associates, imposed in 2003 and significantly tightened in 2024 for corruption, gold smuggling on a gigantic scale, and closing down the opposition. and generally for violating human rights.

According to Olonga, Mnangagwa may also have made such a decision under strong pressure from Beijing, which does not want to share African minerals with the US. And most likely both factors come into play at the same time.

On Wednesday, Mnangagwa made another radical decision by banning the export of all raw minerals and lithium concentrate from the country until further notice in order to force their processing in the country.

Tadeusz Brzozowski (PAP)

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