| Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa has surged in recent years. Fueling this are declines in civil strife and corresponding rises in political stability and investment, expanding foreign initiatives to buy land on which to grow export crops, and growth in demand by manufacturing sectors of Asia, Europe and North America for natural resources, such as oil, copper, bauxite, iron ore and gold. Important here are gem diamonds. Africa produces more than half the global value of these and other precious stones using both modern, capital-intensive mining techniques and labor-intensive artisanal methods. These last have attracted considerable attention, stemming from perceptions of their importance to employment and income, thus suggesting a route to reduce poverty. Thus research tends to portray artisanal miners working in ghastly conditions and being exploited earners of pittances relative to the value of output. Remedial proposals have focused on improving the conditions and helping miners capture larger shares of value added by circumventing intermediaries who connect output to the world market. These recommendations seem to stem more from speculation than from empirical analysis of the conditions and characteristics of mining and, crucially because there is little research on diamond trading. To increase knowledge, the present research interviewed 118 miners and traders in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and South Africa, and 57 indirectly associated actors such as government officials, traditional leaders and non-governmental organization officers. Principal findings are that miners and traders function within local political economies, often venal in nature, designed to protect revenues of large firms and vested political interests, and provide no routes through which to advocate for policy or other change. Within this milieu miners and traders say that what they most want is not on the lists of recommendations in the literature. What they need is improved knowledge to better assess the value of diamonds that they extract and sell so that they themselves can capture more of the value added along the diamond marketing chain. If they can do that, then they themselves can do everything that the literature recommends be done by others to help them. |
