The African continent possesses huge deposits of precious metals and gems which are mined generating considerable profit. Africa commands one half of the deposits located outside Russia and 2/3 of the world’s forecast diamond resources.
Table 1
Distribution of proven diamond reserves and forecast diamond resources by countries and continents in 2006
The table is based on the following materials:
1. Yu. K. Golubev, V. I. Vaganov. Condition, problems and development prospects of Russia’s diamond mineral base. The “Mineral Resources of Russia. Economics and Management” Magazine №6, 2008, page 9.
2. The “Mineral” Information and Analytics Center.
Notes: 1 – by estimation; 2 – insignificant quantity.
Now diamond mining is practiced by 15 countries in Africa. The largest of them, which annually recover over one million carats of diamonds worth more than half a billion U.S. dollars, are Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia and the Republic of South Africa.
Table 2
Diamond output in African countries in 2007-2009
The table is compiled by the author and based on the Kimberley Process data for 2007-2009
All the diamond-mining countries of Africa can be divided into three groups. The group of the countries mentioned above, except for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, may be conventionally called as the group of beneficiation countries since they, besides diamond mining, have started to develop their own diamond-cutting facilities. It should also be noted that these countries possess a high level of diamond-mining techniques and are developing aggregation which gives them a chance to get higher prices for their rough diamonds.
The second group - the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Guinea, Ghana and Congo – includes the countries with a low technological level of diamond-mining, wide use of physical labor, illicit mining, an undeveloped sales system and high level of corruption which predetermine the low cost of recovered diamonds.
The third group – Lesotho, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, Tanzania and Togo – embraces the countries which also lack high mining technologies, but mainly extract large crystals of diamonds selling them at a high price.
The African diamond-mining countries are currently widely represented in the world diamond business which will be dependent in its further development on their aspiration to have a larger share in profits earned from diamond-mining.
Yuri Danilov, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Rough and Polished Diamonds Complex Economy, Institute for Regional Economy of the North (Federal State Scientific Entity)
