Radar | Jun 29,2024
Temesgen Desema used to wake up to the clang of machinery and the shouts of coffee vendors in Sebaboru woreda, Guji Zone, Oromia Regional State. These days, the middle-aged father of five hears only the crunch of his own footsteps and the low murmur of security guards.
Four months ago, the permit granted to small Association, which he had joined seven years earlier for a 1,500 Br membership, was revoked in a blunt text message from the authorities. Since then, he has drifted from one day job to another. Earlier he earned between 4,000 Br and 10,000 Br a month while trying to cover household expenses of roughly 8,000 Br. The shortfall has already pushed two of his children from private into the local public school.
“The town feels empty and silent,” he told Fortune.
Temesgen’s story echoes across Guji’s minerals belt, where once-busy pits now lie idle. Burka Aeba Association is one of the casualties. It employed 225 permanent and temporary workers, paid weekly wages of up to 10,000 Br and expected to extract two to three tonnes of tantalum per year. A new rule from the regional administration reduced the group's land from seven hectares to five, and a five-year permit was cancelled in the second year, even after the group had sunk 70 million Br of bank loans and private capital into the site.
“Now we sit in silence, declaring bankruptcy,” said Luoko Waju, the general manager.
The closures have rippled far beyond the mine gates. Coffee sellers, food vendors and shoeshiners have disappeared. Roads that once bustled are now spare and quiet. Associations that borrowed heavily from banks, government funds and private investors have recorded their losses with the regional revenue bureau. Members stare at empty accounts while interest continues to tick up. Few feel the strain more sharply than Amesu Kena, owner of Nusombo Trading Plc.
A few years ago, she staked everything on a partnership with Guinea Milky Association, led by miner Yosef Gararo. She put her house up as collateral, drew every Birr she could find and helped finance a shipment of mineral samples that a Chinese buyer had agreed to buy in advance for 100,000 dollars. After investing 40 million Br, she fled the site when the authorities suspended operations, and informal diggers took over. Siinqee Bank now holds her home as collateral, and the payment is due.
Letters to the regional state's President’s office, the bank and the Oromia Mining & Development Bureau have drawn no reply.
“Everyone kept quiet,” she said. “Running a business as a woman is hard enough. My marriage is falling apart, and my children face an uncertain future.”
Yosef, a father of 12, shares the burden. Guinea Milky, with more than 300 members, operated for a decade on five hectares. It sent two consignments of ore to China before a single telegram froze all activity. Eleven neighbouring associations, some with up to 700 members, were hit the same way. Many workers support large families. Each member had paid 500 Br towards early costs when the group was formed during a period of regional conflict.
COVID-19 further delayed work, and last year, they managed only basic site cleaning. Now the Association spends 46,000 Br monthly, paying four security personnel to protect two rented machines, hoping that new rules will one day relent.
“If the government wanted the minerals itself, we would sell it to them,” Yosef said.
Profit-sharing agreements promise a split with outside investors once the initial investment is recovered, but for now, there is no profit to share.
Quartz, “flut bar”, tantalum and lithium lie in the red earth beneath Guji, yet lithium and tantalum exports are now reserved for companies judged capable of adding value inside Ethiopia. The authorities' message to small miners was blunt, pressing them to pool resources, find deep-pocketed partners or abandon the ground. Some associations have relocated to other districts. Others, like Burka Aeba , are stuck.
The policy shift has played out against a backdrop of paperwork and deadlines.
Officials insisted that the reforms were signposted. Associations were told that raw exports would end and that only processed material could leave the country. They were advised to register as share companies if they wanted to handle bigger projects. Qenticha, they say, still ranks among Ethiopia’s top five lithium finds, but illegal traders remain a challenge. Plans focus on joint ventures that combine government participation with foreign direct investment, high-grade processing, and environmental safeguards that can absorb up to 40pc of capital costs.
According to a senior official at Oromia’s Mining & Development Bureau, weighty projects may need “hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars”, and talks with the US government are underway.
The official may have in mind companies like Arena Investors LP, which operated through Abyssinian Metals Ltd. It laid out a mining plan, a financial model and draft joint-venture terms, offering to restart operations, inject new cash into Kenticha Mining Plc and eventually take complete control of Abyssinian Metals.
Until the late 2010s, Kenticha was operated by the federal state enterprise Ethiopian Mineral Development SC, which was later merged into the Minerals, Petroleum & Biofuel Corporation. After 2018, the mine was transferred to Oromia Mining, which claimed ownership on behalf of the regional government. With limited capital and expertise, Oromia Mining turned to private partners. In June 2021, it formed Kenticha Mining Plc with Africa Mining & Energy, giving the private partner a 51pc shares. A month later, the Ministry of Mines granted it a license, covering 4.9Sqkm for the exploration of lithium, tantalum and niobium.
That license was short-lived. By mid-2022, the Ministry, through Abebe Bedassa, director of the licence administration unit, gave the firm until July 2022 to catch up, warning that failure would result in “immediate termination.” Subsequently, the Ministry had cancelled Kenticha Mining’s exploration permit, claiming the company failed to start work on time. Yet later, the company secured a large-scale mining license, signed by then-Minister Takele Uma, set to run from 2023 to 2026 and pitched as the start of Ethiopia’s first industrial lithium mine.
In May 2024, the Ministry of Mines ordered Kenticha Mining to surrender its lithium–tantalum–niobium license, citing repeated warnings to start production. At the same time, the company was told to return to exploration mode and submit progress reports, leaving its legal status in limbo.
Three years later, in November 2025, Arena, represented by its Managing Director Shahid Ramzan, appealed to Mines Minister Habtamu Tegegne.
The deal with Arena, its executives claim, would answer a request from the Prime Minister to unlock economic gains and deepen ties with Washington. The letter, signed for the Foreign Ministry by Abraham Mengistu, asked the Mines Ministry to forward the information to the Prime Minister’s Office and to assist with site security and scheduling so that a heads-of-agreement could be signed.
Official accounts describe Kenticha as one of Ethiopia’s most valuable pegmatite deposits. Older estimates speak of about 116 million tonnes of tantalum-bearing ore at a grade of roughly 0.02pc tantalum. More recently, mining plans estimate the deposit holds around 87.7 million tonnes grading 0.78pc lithium oxide, a resource with serious strategic potential.
For decades, Kenticha supplied tantalum, a metal used in electronics, from a rare pegmatite. What has changed is the market. Lithium, hidden in the same highly-fractionated pegmatite that holds tantalum, niobium and other rare metals, has pulled Kenticha from obscurity into the global spotlight.
Since 2018, more than 150 licenses, covering prospecting and small and large-scale operations, have been issued across the two zones, mainly for gold. Only a handful of major operators show up regularly in public records. Among the prominent companies is MIDROC Gold, which runs the Lega Dembi gold mine in Odo Shakiso District and has long been the area’s industrial anchor. Next to it is GODU General Trading SC, managing the Okote gold project, one of the only other large-scale gold operations in the belt.
On the regional front, Oromia Mining SC, part of Tumsa Development Group, holds several projects, including the Adola gold and Kenticha tantalum projects. It also holds a large-scale federal gold license in Anna Sora Wereda, illustrating how the lines between regional and federal mining rights can blur.
Foreign interest has remained strong. Junior miners from Australia and the United States have shown interest in the Guji belt, while KEFI Gold & Copper has applied for lithium, tantalum and rare-earth concessions in the area, although no grants have been confirmed publicly.
Beneath these formal licenses is another layer entirely. Artisanal and small-scale mining is widespread in Guji, drawing tens of thousands of mainly young Ethiopians into informal gold and tantalum digging. In Kenticha, waves of unemployed youth and local miners have at times occupied the site, demanding access to ore and sparking clashes over security and environmental harm. Neither the Ministry of Mines nor the Oromia Mining Bureau released a full list of artisanal mining associations.
However, dozens of licensed small-scale operators in individual districts, such as 33 license holders in Aaga Waayyu District alone, along with an unknown number of traditional groups, work without formal permits.
Saba Tafesse, a veteran miner who once shipped gemstones abroad, believes the policy can work. She argued the government should lead, while associations act as partners, as the laws that squeeze small miners are meant to shut out "opportunist traders" and push locals towards lawful entrepreneurship.
“Value addition can stabilise the region and benefit communities,” she told Fortune.
Whether that vision will comfort people such as Temesgen remains to be seen. He still paces the quiet lanes of Sebaboru, wondering when the machines will start again. For now, the only numbers that matter to him are monthly bills and the absence of a steady wage. If the minerals stay underground, the silence may last much longer than any official deadline.
PUBLISHED ON
Dec 20,2025 [ VOL
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