South Africa’s lithium boom puts 73,000 hectares of farmland in focus

Mining lithium for batteries is a growing part of South Africa’s plan to use the global shift towards green energy to revive its economy, but now it faces a challenge from thousands of angry farmers who fear losing productive land to open-pit mines. On the southeast coast, where a lithium mine operates and more than a dozen prospecting licences have been granted since 2023, scores of generations-old farming communities are relocating. A coalition of activists is launching objections to the prospecting, which according to one group, the Sugar Cane Growers Association (SCGA), threatens 30,000 jobs in farming, labouring or services in this sugar-exporting and tourism hub. Data from South Africa’s mines department reviewed by Reuters show lithium prospecting licences laying claim to some 73,000 hectares (282 square miles), an area slightly larger than the city of Pretoria. Most of it is farmland spanning 117 farms, but also beaches. The existing lithium mine, which also plans to expand, covers 150 hectares of pits and 180 hectares of waste dumps.A clash of green ambitionsAs the climate crisis and disrupted oil shipments from the U.S.-Iran war propel investment in clean energy, South Af...