The Angolan government will voluntarily implement the diamond traceability system to ensure that diamonds mined in the country can be traded without any doubt about their origin, a senior government official has said.
Mineral resources minister Diamantino Pedro Azevedo told the Angola International Diamond Conference in Saurimo that SODIAM had already acquired machines for this purpose.
De Beers chief executive Al Cook pledged to offer Angola its Tracr technology at zero profit.
Tracr is a cutting-edge diamond traceability platform that makes it possible to track a diamond's journey from source to store.
Meanwhile, Azevedo said the conference advocates increasing the potential of diamond activity along the entire length of its value chain, thus generating lasting benefits for the country's economy.
“This will result in significant gains at different scales, and the Angolan citizen should be increasingly inserted as a protagonist in the various stages of the value chain,” he said while speaking Portuguese.
He said the semi-industrial diamond exploration regulated in Presidential Decree No. 85/19 of 21 March is an instrument that enables the participation of Angolan citizens organised in small and medium-sized enterprises in the mining process of small-scale diamond exploration.
This, said Azevedo, is a way that the executive, under the leadership of President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, has designed to empower the Angolan citizens, reduce unemployment and create wealth for the Angolans.
“We cannot, therefore, condone bad practices such as mining that attracts illegal immigration, there is a violation of human rights, destroys the environment and the precepts of good mining practices are not observed,” he said.
The Lunda Sul Province where the conference is taking place produces more than 90% of the country’s annual rough diamonds.
It hosts companies such as the Sociedade Mineira do Catoca, currently the 4th largest diamond mine in the world, and the recently opened Sociedade Mineira do Luele.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief, Rough&Polished from Saurimo, Angola
