Diamonds More Burden Than Asset for Sierra Leone

His heart’s full of love, and he’s walking on diamonds. But Alassan Kabia’s daily toil -- shoveling the gravel that holds gems -- will never pay enough for him to marry his sweetheart.

“We both want to get married, but we can’t,” he said. “She says I should try to find money.”

Kabia, 25, shovels for the boss at $2 a day. He’s too lowly to wash gravel -- the stage of the process when the diamonds are found -- so he has no hope of finding a glittering rock.

From 1935, when British colonial authorities gave the prospecting franchise here to the De Beers mining company, to 1998, 55 million carats of diamonds were taken from the gravel in this small West African nation -- with little benefit to its population.

Prince Kai Saquee, son of a chieftain and chairman of the local Diamond Dealers Assn., says diamonds are the country’s great hope. On his office wall, just below a gaping hole in his shabby plywood ceiling, he has a poster of the 968.9-carat Star of Sierra Leone, discovered near here in 1972.

“People say it’s a curse, but I differ from that,” Saquee said. In this region of eastern Sierra Leone, known as Kono, areas that focus on mining are richer than those based on agriculture, he said.

But around Koidu, many disagree.

Diamonds -- easy to hide, smuggle and trade for weapons -- were the main fuel for the 10-year civil war here, which ended in 2002. Since then, about 2,400 mining licenses have been issued, but smuggling and illicit mining are still rife. Sierra Leone officially exported $140 million in diamonds last year, but aid organizations that study the diamond trade believe the total of illegal exports was several times higher.

The country remains next to last on the United Nations Human Development index, which measures key development indicators.

Kabia shakes his head when asked whether diamonds have enriched his country.

“Diamonds destroyed this country. Right now there are no good roads around Kono, no light, no electricity, no water, and this is where all the diamonds are coming from.

“Diamonds made the war because all the rebels came here to mine diamonds, and they used the money to buy weapons,” he said.

“I’d like to be trained for another job.”

Kabia shovels gravel all day and, in the evening, chops firewood to sell.

“I only think about getting food. I think about how I am going to care for my family. That’s why I come out here every morning.”

Experts with development organizations make a similar point about the effects of the diamond trade.

“Sierra Leone’s diamond mining areas are among the poorest and least developed in the impoverished country,” said a recent annual review by Partnership Africa Canada, a nongovernmental organization that supports human rights and development, particularly in the diamond industry.

“This is partly because the diamond mining sector seems to attract mainly fly-by-night investors with little interest in reinvesting profits into other productive economic activities in the diamond areas,” the report said. “Most miners and dealers are in effect ‘strangers’ who simply move their money back to where they came from.”

The export tax and licensing fees on diamonds last year yielded only $5.2 million for the government, which relies on foreign donors for about half its budget.

Most of the country’s nine major diamond exporters are foreigners. The biggest is a Lebanese businessman, Hisham Mackie, who controlled 51% of the official diamond export trade last year. Mackie’s share dwarfed that of the biggest Sierra Leonean exporter, Bajibu Kabba, whose diamonds accounted for less than 5% of exports.

A local theory holds that for many decades, Sierra Leoneans were afraid of mining diamonds because British colonials had told tribal chiefs that the stones were evil and dangerous.

“In the colonial days, the British misinformed people about the worth of diamonds. They were illiterate, and they didn’t know what a diamond was. If you found a diamond, you’d draw a ring around it and call the English commissioner, and he’d come and pick it up as if it was a devilish thing,” Saquee said.

People here say that fear partly explains why Sierra Leoneans stayed out of diamond mining when thousands of Lebanese and West African Madingo traders moved in to mine illegally in the 1950s.

Some Sierra Leoneans have moved into the diamond business, often as small-scale, independent “artisanal” miners. For many, the returns are low.

The big profits go to traders and exporters -- mostly foreigners, analysts say. The artisanal miners generally make little money because many do not know the international value of diamonds or have much clout in negotiations with traders.

The recent review by Partnership Africa Canada cited the case of an artisanal miner who was paid $30,000 for a diamond by a dealer who then sold the stone to an exporter for $180,000.

“Given the fact that smuggling is most often done by dealers and exporters, the loss to the nation must be huge. The loss to the artisanal miners, the laborers who seem forever stuck in poverty, is even greater,” the report said.

Saquee, the diamond trader, is working to encourage more Sierra Leoneans to become traders, which he sees as key to his country getting more benefit from diamonds.

About 10% to 15% of traders are local people, he said, up from only a few before the civil war. His aim is for the business to be 40% Sierra Leonean.

The problem is the cost. Setting up as a trader requires nearly $3,000, a huge hurdle in a country where 82% of the population lives in dire poverty.

“Not a lot of us can raise such funds,” Saquee said.

Just becoming an artisanal miner can cost $1,000 in license fees and bribes, a sum out of reach for many.

For some Sierra Leoneans, illegal mining is the most appealing option.

One recent day, as the sun climbed lazily into the sky above Koidu, brightly colored umbrellas popped up like mushrooms across the dun landscape honeycombed with mining digs. Laborers toiled in the sun washing gravel in circular sieves while their bosses sat watching in the shade of their umbrellas.

Nearby, three young men clambered up a dirt track after swimming across a river from an illegal mine they were digging.

Mohammed Kamara, 38, and Mustafa Kamara, 33, friends from the same village, had given up farming for mining. In 2000, they gave up working for a share of their boss’ profit and struck out on their own as illegals. Now they face the daily risk of their mining tools being seized by inspectors, who are widely regarded here as corrupt.

“We can beg them or sometimes we run,” Mohammed Kamara said.

They are driven by the hope that one day they will lay their hands on a diamond big enough to lift them out of poverty.

“It’s a hard job -- the work, the shovel and the washing. At the end of the day I feel weak,” Mohammed Kamara said.

“I hope that I get money, that I’ll get rich one day. That’s what keeps me going.”