The role of the military in the mining sector in sub-Saharan Africa has been primarily examined through the lens of securitization of the sector (Johnson, 2019; Hilson, 2017; Saunders, 2014; Schroeder, 2010). In many cases, the military have been part of state-led efforts to prevent informal mining. In Ghana, for example, several taskforces involving the army have been formed since 2000 (Eduful et al., 2020), and a ‘crackdown’ on Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) was launched in 2017. In his analysis of the crackdown, Hilson (2017) contrasts the Ghanaian government approach with the strategies of the Tanzanian Government, which avoided such active enforcement and focused instead on facilitating formalization of ASM. In recent years, however, the role of the military in Tanzania’s ASM sector has become more visible. In this article, therefore, we ask to what extent the ‘securitization’ concept might be useful in understanding the role of the military in Tanzania’s ASM sector, relative to other concepts (such as the role of the military in commercial activities; or the use of the military in public infrastructure projects to reduce costs).

The state generally has an interest in closely regulating and policing the exploitation, processing and trade in high value minerals and metals because of their economic significance and wider trade linkages, and the frequency of local disputes and conflicts associated with extractivism. Scholars such as Selwyn (2022) and Gómez-Barris (2017) have documented how zones of large-scale extractivism are typically secured through surveillance, controls over movement, and dispossession of indigenous and/or local communities, often through mobilization of state security agencies. Beyond initial dispossession of land and natural resources, local communities also face pollution and disruption to socio-cultural norms due to the operations of large-scale mines. Given that many mine sites produce commodities vital to the military-industrial complex (such as metals used in computing systems), Selywn coins the term “martial mining” to explain “the co-production of extractivism and militarism: established and expanded through multi-dimensional warfare, extractive zones simultaneously materialize the arms trade and global military powers” (2022: pg 145). Large-scale extractivism is enmeshed in highly organized forms of militarized control over particular areas and specific flows of commodities. Literature on artisanal and small-scale production, which is in contrast highly dispersed across large areas and less predictable in terms of productivity, tends to emphasize the more sporadic and fragmented forms of intervention by security agencies (Li, 2023; McDonald, 2023; Velez-Torres, 2014).

We examine the direct and ‘official’ involvement of military actors in mining production activities during peacetime; for example, in managing mining activities at extraction sites, providing security in and around mines, and participation in governance institutions in the mining sector. The paper is based partly on interviews and observations from fieldwork conducted in October and November 2018 in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Manyara, and Dodoma, involving civil society organizations including professional associations within the gemstone sector; civil servants, politicians; large-scale mine operators, members of the private sector and ASM operators. We argue that the securitization concept has some salience in the Tanzania case, but that military involvement in mining can also be viewed as part of broader strategies of the state to promote industrialization, through state-owned enterprises (SOEs), including military-owned companies (Behuria, 2012). Recent military involvement in mining coincided with a government turn towards ‘Resource Nationalism’ (RN), and military involvement is linked to discourses and practices of RN in Tanzania.