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Farirai Machivenyika-Senior Reporter 

British mining company Cluff Africa, intends to return to Zimbabwe to partner Mutapa Investment Fund in mining lithium in Mberengwa following an invitation by President Mnangagwa to reinvest in this country.

Company chairman Mr Algy Cluff and his delegation yesterday met Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister, Dr Frederick Shava, and discussed investment opportunities in the country.

Minister Shava said the meeting was a follow-up of the one when President Mnangagwa met Mr Cluff at the coronation of King Charles III last year.

“It is a follow-up of meetings that the President held in London during the coronation of King Charles III. The President held meetings with British business people, particularly the people from the Westminster Parliamentary Group, and Mr Cluff was part of them.

“He bemoaned at that time that he had wanted to continue mining in Zimbabwe but had left for his reasons following the land reform. He was inquiring from the President, Dr Mnangagwa, whether he could still pursue possibilities of coming to mine in Zimbabwe. He was reminding the President then that he was the pioneer of the Freda-Rebecca mining company in Bindura,” said Dr Shava.

The President promptly invited him to come back and invest in the country. 

“The President encouraged him to come back and negotiate re-establishing himself and this is why he is now here. They are proposing to go into partnership in the mining of lithium at Sandawana with the Mutapa Investment Fund and they are also proposing a partnership with the Mutapa Fund, that Cluff will own 65 percent and Mutapa Fund will own 35 percent.

“They are also suggesting that of the shareholding that Cluff will own, they will give 10 percent to the workers and we said this was commendable.

“Then they will be looking around for other possibilities in Zimbabwe and they are confident that they can restart the mining ventures in Zimbabwe with this kind of partnership,. 

The minister said the visit by Mr Cluff and his delegation was an indication of the success of the country’s re-engagement with countries that had withdrawn from Zimbabwe as a reaction to the country’s land reform.

“Now that the land reform is behind us, everybody is settling down and we are re-engaging them, talking to them, encouraging them to come back and find a starting point like what Cluff has done.

Mr Cluff said he was pleased to come back and re-invest in the country.

“I am very pleased to be back here in Zimbabwe having been among the first investors in the mining sector after independence in 1980. 

“We have returned at the invitation of the President and we are contemplating investment, substantial investment, in industrial minerals.

“Firstly, the project which we have done our due diligence into and are anxious to start work on, production from, will produce a substantial cash flow for the country for 30 or 40 years if it is as large as we believe it to be,” he said.

The delegation has been in Zimbabwe since late last week and is understood to have visited Mberengwa to have an appreciation of the ongoing operations at Sandawana, where Kuvimba Mining House has a lithium project. 

Headquartered in London, the Cluff Group of Companies is among natural resource explorers in the United Kingdom. Cluff Energy, backed by the IPGL Group, prioritises safe and sustainable operations that create a positive impact in the communities and countries in which they operate. 

Since the 1970s, Cluff has operated sustainable and efficient natural resources projects in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.