The Diamond Development Initiative (DDI)
"The DDI offers and intelligent approach to the long-standing problems of artisanal diamond mining. Regulation has its place, but development problems require development solutions."
– Ministry of Mineral Resources, Sierra Leone
What is the DDI?
More than a million African artisanal diamond diggers and their families live and work in absolute poverty, outside the formal economy, in countries struggling to recover from the ravages of war. The DDI is a unique effort to address their problems, bringing NGOs, governments, business and academia together in a common effort that aims to convert diamonds from a fuel for war into an engine for development.
Why is the DDI important?
The problem of “conflict diamonds” is now well known. Rebel groups in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Angola and elsewhere took control of alluvial diamond mining areas in the 1990s, enabling them to pursue their brutal wars for many years. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) has worked to create a legally binding global certification system for rough diamonds. It now involves 75 countries and controls the movement of all rough diamonds from mine to market, throughout the world.
Conflict diamonds were a product of vast alluvial diamond areas in Africa where diamonds are mined by artisans -- diggers. There are as many as 120,000 diggers in Sierra Leone, 800,000 in the DRC and many tens of thousands in Angola, Liberia, Brazil, and elsewhere.
The 2004 PAC/GW report, Rich Man, Poor Man, called on governments, NGOs and the private sector to come together to find ways in which some of the poorest people in Africa – people who produce great wealth for others – could obtain a fairer share.
What is DDI trying to do?
DDI was formally launched at a meeting in Accra, in October 2005 and was incorporated as a non-profit charitable organization in the United States in 2006. DDI’s head office was established in Canada in 2008.
The DDI’s basic challenge is to encourage better work environments and better prices for diggers. This will involve education for miners, access to credit and artisanal mining equipment, training in diamond valuation, government intervention to help streamline marketing, and improved labour laws.
