Guinea, which held its first democratic transfer of power in 2010 is one the African countries that is said to have a huge potential in diamond mining.
The country, which according to the Kimberley Process exported 696,731 carats of diamonds in 2009 with a total value of close to $29 million, recorded a 60 percent decline in production to 200,000 carats for the first nine months of 2010.
Guinea’s Finance Ministry which issued out the production figures failed to give an explanation for the decreased output of diamonds.
Rough & Polished also tried but to no avail to get a comment on the issue from the country’s new Mines Minister Mohamed Lamine Fofana at the recently ended Mining Indaba in Cape Town.
However, all he could provide was a paper the ministry had prepared on diamond operations in the country.
Although, the paper was somewhat outdated it provided useful information on the country’s diamond mining.
The ministry noted that Guinea had an estimated diamond resource of between 25 and 30 million carats.
Other sources also made different estimations of Guinea's total diamond reserves, from 30 to as high as 400 million carats with known reserves accounting for 3.3 million carats.
Gem-quality stones
The mines ministry said diamonds in the country were generally of good quality with a clear predominance of gem-quality stones.
All workable diamond reserves were situated on the south of the country, in the so-called Forest Guinea, along the riverbeds of Baule, Makona and Diani rivers.
About 20 kimberlite pipes, a hundred dykes and veins and numerous small, almost depleted alluvial placers were known in the area.
However, in Forest Guinea, four best diamondiferous deposits were distinguished and these were Banankoro-Urukoro, Ferugban, Fenaria and Bunudu.
Banankoro-Urukoro
Diamonds here can be found in kimberlites and placers. The biggest kimberlite pipe Antoshka was located here. In Antoshka one can run across rhomboid-dodecahedral and octahedral diamonds with irregular and oval-cascade facets.
Their average weight was 0.08-0.35 carats. Gem diamonds percentage varied between 20 and 60 percent. Proved reserves were about 1 million carats.
Ferugban
Ferugban was a rather complicated kimberlite body consisting of 12 neighboring dikes sized from 2 by 20 meters to 25 by 175 meters. Most of the diamonds had irregular shape and a complex sculptural surface. Average weight - 0.08 carats.
Fenaria
On Fenaria formations installed only those kimberlite dikes that had developed within 25 kilometers of a big fracture zone. The diamonds were either irregular crystals or rhomboid-dodecahedral diamonds with mat surface.
Bunudu
This was a sizeable kimberlite pipe Druzhba. The pipe was accompanied by numerous dikes containing porphyritic kimberlite. Diamond quality was low, and average weight ranged between 0.06 and 0.81 carats.
However, sometimes one may extract crystals weighing 30-50 and even as high as 275 carats.
Exploration
The ministry said several companies were currently working in diamond exploration and these included Debsam, a subsidiary of De Beers, which had been researching for mineralized kimberlite bodies.
It said Rio Tinto had also searched for kimberlites in partnership with Aredor but so far the mineralized kimberlite bodies recorded were too small in size.
Frustrated
The slow pace at which diamond reserves in the country had been exploited appeared to have been a source of frustration to the previous regime in Guinea.
Guinea was in 2008 forced to cancel a diamond mining license held by Aredor, which was 85 percent owned by Azure Resources.
Aredor was the largest diamond mining operator in the West African country but the government accused it of having stopped all activities for three years despite promising various ministers it would restart its operations.
Not all gloomy
Although Guinea’s mines ministry said the full potential of the country’s diamonds remained open, some companies had of late been making some progress in the country.
Stellar Diamonds, which holds three licenses over the high-grade Bouro kimberlites as well as four licences over the Droujba kimberlite pipe and surrounding area recently reported “encouraging” initial diamond recoveries from drill core samples of its 100 percent Droujba kimberlite pipe.
It said it had recovered 538 diamonds from 291.62kg of Kimberlite, as well as five commercial sized diamonds larger than 0.85mm.
“These excellent results confirm that the Droujba kimberlite pipe has the potential to be significantly diamondiferous,” said company chief executive Karl Smithson.
“It is encouraging to not only see a large number of diamonds recovered, but also to confirm the presence of commercial sized stones in the relatively small sample processed.”
Stellar was also focused on two producing projects at Bomboko and Mandala, where mining had been ongoing since mid 2009.
Guinea, which was also the world's top exporter of bauxite relied on minerals for over 70 percent of exports.
It was quite palpable that the country wanted to see a great movement in diamond mining as this had a huge potential to earn it a lot of revenue.
With Stellar Diamonds making great progress, Guinea appears to be a country to keep an eye on.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Rough&Polished, from Namibia
