PAC: Congo Diamond Diggers Work in Sub-Human Conditions

While a Congolese diamond digger generates on average $900 in annual diamond exports, he is paid only about $1 a day and works in sub-human conditions, says Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) in its 2007 DRC Diamond Industry Annual Review published Tuesday.

More than half of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) foreign exchange earnings are derived from the export of diamonds, and an estimated 700,000 people dig for them, PAC reported. These ‘artisanal’ miners work under dangerous and unhealthy circumstances.

More than 90 percent of the country’s $700 million in diamond exports is produced by small-scale entrepreneurs, working under sub-human conditions who earn, on average, a dollar a day, PAC found.

Reforms to the diamond industry in the DRC are not moving quickly enough, is the central message in the review published by PAC in Ottawa and the Centre National d’Appui au Developpement et a la Participation Populaire (CENADEP) in Kinshasa.

Diamonds have a bloody history in the country, helping finance wars that claimed the lives of an estimated four million Congolese. 

This issue of the Annual Review has a special focus on the country’s artisanal miners: what they earn, how they are organized and supported, and how they are exploited and what needs to be done to change the situation, according to PAC.

Research for the report, carried out over a two month period earlier this year, followed extensive travel by PAC researchers through the DRC’s diamond mining areas, and meetings with miners, buyers, smugglers and officials in an effort to understand this complex and very important aspect of the country’s economy, and its future.

PAC’s Diamond Industry Annual Reviews, first produced in 2004, are available for Angola and Sierra Leone as well. They aim to provide governments, civil society and investors with information that will be helpful in the promotion of greater transparency and more positive development from the industry.