Economic potentials, challenges and opportunities for sustainable mining in Wollo opal mining, Ethiopia

Currently, opal mining in Ethiopia significantly contribution to the socio-economic growth of the country. Wollo opal has good play of color and is highly competitive in the global opal market. However, due to less investment and traditional mining practices, illegal opal market transactions, and low value addition processes, the forex earned revenue and other socio-economic opportunities gained from the resource are not desirably enough. Thus, this study aims to explore opportunities, identify challenges, and forward effective suggestions for the sustainable mining of Wollo opal. Suggestions are important for increasing opal productivity, increasing mining safety, and improving job creation in future Wollo opal mining. The major identified challenges in Wollo opal mining are miners’ use of rudimentary mining tools, the collapse of underground mining holes, unlawful opal market chains, less value addition, the environmental impacts of mining waste, and miners’ health risk. On the bases of existing data on the production of opal and generated revenue from Wollo opal, quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed to elucidate the current opal marketing. On the bases of statistical data, processed opal resources had a great impact on revenue generation than rough opal resources did during the year from 2019_2023. However, the forex currency earned in a legal way was reduced and occasionally fluctuated from time to time because of the opal market being jammed by illegal collectors and contrabandists. On the bases of the forwarded suggestions for the current existing challenges the government and other mining stakeholders should take measurements for the sustainable mining and marketing of opal resources.