Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. They said.
Growing up in Africa ( Uganda), the definition of luxury was very blurred, I mean, the kind of luxury that represented wealth was usually in terms of property, gold, automobiles, the ability to wear imported clothes and the the ability to go out of the country. As we grew up and saw how television was marketing this glitz and glam sub-cautiously to us was very smooth. Even still, as teenagers, we never dreamed about how big in size the engagement diamond would be. After growing up into a young woman, it still was not apparent to me the emotional value attached to diamonds, and this made me and most of my African friends complacent to the size of the ring we hopped from our future husbands. The irony is that most of the world’s diamonds come from Africa but most Africans have a low affinity for this kind of luxury and their economies cannot let them be able to afford these luxuries.
Knowing that most African countries do not benefit from the trade of diamonds is a very heart breaking fact and we have to change this unfairness by understanding the impact of diamonds.
The Business
The business of diamonds is not any different from that of fashion. The difference is that diamonds are highly precious and therefore highly valued, and this causes room for a black market. Even though the business has been frowned upon due to its opaqueness to the general public, there are very lucrative, healthy diamond trading countries that have legitimised diamond mining and have a free open market to trade. Such countries are rare, and one of them is Botswana that managed to put definitive laws governing the trade of diamonds.
However, for many other African countries, the diamond business is mostly illegal involving a chain of activities that will appear legal but on paper, can not be traced. This makes that it hard to scale the value of the business based on the legal diamonds mined and the illegal one. This undervalues the legal diamonds because they will have to go through the rightful means of discretion and that makes the price lower as opposed to illegal diamonds that can not be traced and transactions are not booked or recorded but rather laundered. Some examples of countries that export diamonds but still have a poor economy are Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia and many other African countries with other precious minerals that are not so different from diamond.
The Impact
Who gains?
Well, we know the beneficiaries of the trade come in many forms. The beautiful lady whose fiance must show the entire world how precious his finding is (the woman) and should be complemented with something precious like a diamond. Of course in this case, the lady gains a precious stone on her finger and has both men and women jealous, the former wishing they could afford such precious stones so that they can too make a beautiful woman forever theirs, and the latter wishing in envy that it were them. This is so say that culture has pushed for material gestures to express love and diamonds are the expression of love as marketed on Television and on the streets. Let alone celebrities who make it a point to say the number of carats in the diamond as to measure their monetary value.
Large corporations that have been in this business for years since colonial times stand to benefit. Not to say that there is something wrong with these corporations existing, my point is that there has been a monopoly that has been created, and this makes specific corporations let alone individuals that are even above the government due to the amount of wealth they have accumulated over the years. The issue is that the miners’ lives who do the hard work never change but a CEO in England is making his future generations richer and richer. That, to me is questionable.
War minerals benefit African dictators through the illegal mining and sale of diamonds for arms that are actually oppressing citizens to remain in power. For example in the Congo DRC, resources are used finance wars in neighbouring countries like Central African Republic, Uganda and South Sudan. Dictators like Museveni from Uganda who has been in power for 35 years, an alleged conduit of the west makes sure there is an endless war in the DRC and Great Lakes Region of Africa ( Uganda, DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, CAR, and many more), which allows for a perfect mess for “peace keepers” to come and ensure ”peace”. Therefore these dictatorial governments benefit from diamonds trade by buying arms that keep their subjects in check and keep the westerners happy with a supply. Because let us be honest, not too many Africans are buying diamond rings or diamond, so these definitely benefit a different part of the world.
What working conditions! Diamond mines should have enough money to invest in less intimidating means of security.
Who loses?
Child Labour: Most illegal mining is prone to child labour activities because children are cheaper to use than adults. With the atrocities committed in the mines, it very apparent that these children are between ages of 7 and 16, and are exposed to dangerous tunnels, disease and torture from supervisors. These children have been denied their right to education and end up living their entire lives on the mines. In many cases they work long hours carrying heavy material and shovels, putting their lives at risk of collapses and any other dangers. And since the trade is illegal in many cases, nobody ever gets to know about the life of a child miner.
Community: There is nothing socially sustainable about diamond mines and let alone the end user. In my opinion, we are slaves to our possessions and the more you have, the more you are controlled by them. In the communities where these mines are located let alone the countries have been faced with wars, rebels, pollutions, etc. And to top it up are the corrupt governments that work on individual bases that ensure suffering of many and have selfish interests for the greater collective. This has made Africa a cradle for corruption, war, poverty and hopelessness and inequality. On the flip side, the end user has a precious possession that has to be insured and protected perhaps more than their own life, that social sustainability is thrown out the window and there is an insecure, paranoid human being. I mean, remember what happened to Kim Kardashian in Paris, she was kidnapped and robbed all because of a diamond ring that she had been flaunting to the whole world. I hope you can see my point.
The Environment: Diamond the stone appears almost 1500km into the ground, after having formed over a period of aeons of carbon colliding and intense pressure and heating due to earth movements. To reach the layers of diamond, earth needs to blasted open to reach below the surface. This means that holes and tunnels are dug into the ground, causing permanent changes in geology of the places they are mined, not forgetting the toxins left in the environment. This means that the air is always polluted hence why many miners suffer from lung cancer during their lifetime. On top of that, these companies, or even individuals have zero regard for Corporate Social Responsibility, therefore leave destruction behind after the aftermath.
The solution
In conclusion, the solution is to educate ourselves and stop waiting for governments and policy makers to do something. It is an individual responsibility for each and everyone that is living here on earth today to ensure that our trails are indeed good for our future and that of future humanity. We need to stop thinking that there is a group of people that deserve to live good and the others deserve to be poor generation after generation. Let us not be complicit an understand our power to change the world and the way it has been run, to a more sustainable community of humans that care about the growth and existence of fellow humans and their habitat.
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT
TURAH ECO 
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