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Mines/Zimbabwe

Bikita mine

Bikita mine, Zimbabwe. Producing, open pit, mining lithium, caesium, beryllium.

Why Bikita is famous

Zimbabwe's Bikita is a lithium, caesium and beryllium mine. History not yet sourced.1

What kind of deposit

Lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatite

Bikita today

Where lithium is mined todayWhere caesium is mined todayBeryllium: the storyMining in Zimbabwe

Where next

Mines

ExamplesGoulaminaAfrican lithium: Goulamina in Mali and Bikita in Zimbabwe.2Same kind of depositGreenbushesTwo lithium pegmatite mines: Greenbushes in Western Australia, Bikita in Zimbabwe.3

Deposit types

An example ofLithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatiteA working example of the lithium-caesium-tantalum (lct) pegmatite type.4

Sources

  1. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  2. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Lithium US Geological Survey
  3. Greenbushes Lithium Operation technical report summary 2025 Albemarle Corporation (SEC exhibit 96.1, SLR technical report summary)
  4. Mineral Deposit Models for Resource Assessment, Chapter O: Mineral-Deposit Model for Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum Pegmatites (SIR 2010-5070-O) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Cerro Rico over Potosí by Jbmurray, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Salar de Atacama, Chile, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).