Mine waste dumps across Zimbabwe represent one of the country’s most undervalued mineral assets, despite their potential to contribute meaningfully to critical‑mineral supply, environmental rehabilitation, and circular‑economy objectives. Generated historically from gold, base‑metal, chromite, and tin operations, these tailings, slag, and waste‑rock deposits contain residual metals that were either unrecovered by earlier processing technologies or never targeted due to limited economic interest at the time. Developing resource characterisation for these legacy dumps provides a systematic framework for quantifying their mineral potential, integrating geological, geochemical, mineralogical, metallurgical, and economic data sets to transform waste into viable secondary orebodies. Effective resource characterisation requires high‑resolution surveying to define dump geometry and tonnage, stratigraphic mapping, targeted sampling to capture spatial grade variability, multi‑element geochemical and mineralogical analysis to identify critical minerals and determine liberation characteristics and processing behaviour, geostatistical modelling, and data integration into spatial databases. These data sets support the generation of input data required for the development of metallurgical test work, flow sheets development, and economic evaluation models. Despite this potential, not much work has been done to characterise mine‑waste dumps in Zimbabwe. Existing studies focus predominantly on environmental risks such as acid mine drainage (AMD) and metal contamination, with limited attention to the economic recovery of critical minerals. Most dumps have no surveyed volumes, no systematic sampling, no multi‑element assays, and no geostatistical models. Metallurgical knowledge remains limited, and policy frameworks governing tailings ownership, reprocessing rights, and circular‑economy incentives are underdeveloped. These gaps constrain investment, technology deployment, and strategic planning. This paper outlines the role of structured resource characterisation in unlocking the critical‑minerals potential of Zimbabwe’s mine‑waste inventory. By addressing current deficiencies through systematic characterisation, Zimbabwe could quantify the value of its mine‑waste resources, support low‑impact mineral supply, reduce environmental liabilities, and align national mining policy with global trends in circularity and critical‑minerals security.