Afghanistan lithium portable power brand

The Taliban spokesman even mentioned the possibility to use the lithium to produce batteries inside Afghanistan and export them. Such a prospect appears far-fetched though. «Afghanistan has all the raw materials necessary to produce lithium-based batteries,» Dr. Wnuk told SIGA.

“The United States' Geological Survey has estimated that Afghanistan has rich resources of lithium and even had compared Afghanistan with Saudi Arabia. It means as Saudi Arabia is the biggest fuel producer in the world, Afghanistan also one day can be the biggest lithium producer in the world,” said Sayed Zaman Hashemi, an expert.

The economic impact of this mining discovery is simply enormous: the total reserves represent about 1,000 billion. The two main sources of lithium are hard rock sources in pegmatites and in solution within continental brines, both of which are present in Afghanistan. This might become the backbone of the Afghan economy.

Recent predictions of an alleged lithium rush in Afghanistan focus on lithium-bearing hard rock minerals mined in the eastern Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar, from where also the stones seized by the Taliban in January 2023 originated. (That said, there are also reports on lithium-containing brines in other places in Afghanistan.

Finding minerals with higher lithium content is, even under the best of circumstances, difficult, as the theoretical lithium oxide content of the minerals that can be mined in large quantities in Afghanistan — spodumene and petalite — is at best only a few percent above the aforementioned example of 5% lithium oxide content.

For example, in 2010, i.e. well over a decade ago, The New York Times cited an internal memorandum of the U.S. Department of Defense stating «that Afghanistan could become the 'Saudi Arabia of lithium'».