Frontiers of Extraction and Contestation: dispossession, exclusion and local resistance against MIDROC Laga-Dambi Gold Mine, southern Ethiopia

Resource frontiers in Ethiopia have served as spaces of state power consolidation and wealth accumulation manifestations asymmetrical relations between society. Successive Ethiopian regimes pursued high-modernist development models under broader narratives civilizing ‘backward’ societies ‘transforming’ ‘unproductive’ into productive resources. Although much intervention the pastoralist was effected through large-scale commercial farming, extractive industries become another dimension frontier expansion. Ethiopia's liberalization its mining economy 1990s has attracted private investors to politically marginalized peripheries country. Accordingly, MIDROC Laga-Dambi Gold Mine, largest gold-producing company country, 1997 granted a 20-year lease over 485 km2 land Guji zone, Oromia National Regional State. The soon developed an exclusionary approach with local communities little investment social services, employment environmental sustainability. On contrary, strong link macro-political order reliance on coercive subduing resistance enabled it create enclave where operated without accountability for two decades. This paper analyzes interplay practices constellations at site, how such reconfigured state-society relations, leading conflict eventual suspension company's license May 2018. argues that rooted within political formation considers territories resource (full resources but empty people). asks questions entitlement level, micro politics, national are entangled produce different forms contestation negotiation. It concludes this entanglement shapes companies operate also states formulate policies.