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Across the global south and in Sub-Saharan Africa’s resource economies more specifically, extractivism is widely understood as an unproductive force wherein the state extracts rents and exploits the masses. Little is known about how extractivism and waiting coexist with everyday statehood in politically fragile resource-frontiers. This article develops the concept of waiting as governance to understand the ways in which South Sudan’s central state in Juba weaponizes the delivery of public revenues and services as a mode of governance in Unity State’s oil frontiers. Rather than understanding this governing arrangement as unproductive and symptomatic of a failed state, it contends that it is productive for the central state’s modus operandi.
Add to Calendar 22-10-2026 15:00 22-10-2026 16:00 Europe/London Extractivism, Everyday Statehood, and ‘Waiting as Governance’ in South Sudan’s Oilfields (Unity State)
Across the global south and in Sub-Saharan Africa’s resource economies more specifically, extractivism is widely understood as an unproductive force wherein the state extracts rents and exploits the masses. Little is known about how extractivism and waiting coexist with everyday statehood in politically fragile resource-frontiers. This article develops the concept of waiting as governance to understand the ways in which South Sudan’s central state in Juba weaponizes the delivery of public revenues and services as a mode of governance in Unity State’s oil frontiers. Rather than understanding this governing arrangement as unproductive and symptomatic of a failed state, it contends that it is productive for the central state’s modus operandi.

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