Zimbabwe has staked its economic future on keeping its mineral wealth at home, banning the export of unprocessed lithium and other resources in a bid to build domestic industries that refine, manufacture, and endure. The policy has drawn over a billion dollars in investment and signals a genuine ambition to move from extraction to creation. Yet the oldest tension in resource nationalism persists beneath the surface: when a nation draws a line to protect its wealth, it must also decide who, among its own people, gets to stand on the right side of it. The smaller miners of Zimbabwe are asking th