The biopolitical war for life: Extractivism and the Ugandan oil state

In Uganda, “oil for development” is being championed as a key to a “better life”. It is being promoted alongside a seemingly ever-growing discourse of state security aimed at promoting a particular biopolitical life and eliminating, both physically and politically, societal groups deemed incompatible with this vision, including human rights groups and particular Congolese nationals. Through political de-subjectification – that is, the reduction of the political subject into a political object – incompatible groups populating the natural resource-rich sections of Uganda have been identified. They are under constant threat of being removed, under the pretext of the betterment of a society based on resource development, at any given time.