Daily, 46-year-old Dia walks into the jungle to hunt exhausting, harmful and precarious work within the diamond pits that pockmark the panorama of Kono District in jap Sierra Leone.

If he’s fortunate, he’ll dig for as much as 10 hours in knee-deep mud to obtain two or three US {dollars} on the finish of the day.

“The cash is just not good and the work is difficult,” he says. After 20 years of working as a digger, he has little to indicate for it – his every day wage stays barely sufficient to supply meals and shelter for his spouse and 4 youngsters.

The diamonds that Dia and tens of 1000’s of others like him have extracted from Kono’s soils have bought for billions in worldwide markets.

Diamonds from the fields across the Kono District capital of Koidu, one of many richest diamond deposits on the earth, as soon as fuelled Sierra Leone’s brutal decade-long civil struggle.

This modified in 1995 with the arrival of South African mercenary outfit Govt Outcomes, which took management over town’s diamond fields from the Revolutionary United Entrance insurgent group.

Management was subsequently secured by a government-granted mining concession – a reward for the navy help. The occasion marked the start of Koidu Restricted.

Now owned by Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz’s BSG Assets, the corporate has performed a defining position within the native diamond trade ever since.

To develop its authentic mining operations, the corporate destroyed a big proportion of town and its environment, evicting lots of from their houses. This precipitated main disruption to native livelihoods, destroying swaths of farmlands, polluting the air and contaminating underground water within the space.

These protesting the enlargement have been intimidated by police forces co-opted by Koidu Restricted. In a number of cases, protesters have been shot and killed.

Apart from the supply of insufficient substitute housing to quite a lot of evicted residents, communities in Koidu haven’t obtained compensation for damages. Nor have they seen a lot of the wealth generated from the exploitation of their land.

The town has few paved roads and no working water. Electrical energy runs for just some hours within the night and, opposite to preliminary guarantees, the corporate has created solely a restricted variety of poorly paid jobs.

Koidu Restricted contested claims that it had achieved injury to the neighborhood, and famous that final month the excessive courtroom in Makeni dominated within the firm’s favour towards a lawsuit filed by a gaggle representing evicted Koidu residents. The group stated it could attraction the decision.

Koidu Restricted had “fulfilled all of its commitments to the welfare of the communities inside which it operates” and the corporate’s relationship with the neighborhood was “exceptionally optimistic”, stated Ibrahim Turray, head of company affairs at Koidu Restricted.

However Arthur Kargbo, a neighborhood activist, disagreed. “They’re taking our diamonds however folks don’t profit,” he tells the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Undertaking (OCCRP).

To make a dwelling, many residents have needed to depend on artisanal mining, digging within the surrounding jungles with pickaxes and shovels searching for diamonds.

“Mainly everybody in Kono is in some way depending on artisanal diamonds,” says Ibrahim Bockarie, a area people advocate.

Some estimates recommend that artisanal diamond mining might instantly make use of as many as 300 000 folks, producing round 40% of Sierra Leone’s diamonds. Characterised by a fancy manufacturing mode, the trade is notoriously exploitative.

With out capital, you change into a slave

Each morning, streams of individuals head from Kono’s cities and villages to the bush searching for work. Arriving on the pits — deep, waterlogged, muddy sores dotting the panorama — they start to ask for work, addressing managers of particular person artisanal mines.

If fortunate sufficient to search out employment for the day, the diggers, clad in little greater than ragged T-shirts and baseball caps, wade barefoot into the mud. Shovels in hand, they excavate the earth to a depth of as much as 20 metres. Lengthy chains of individuals stretch from the depths of the pit to the encompassing partitions, as buckets of unsieved gravel are handed from individual to individual.

This gravel is later washed and sieved searching for the dear gems.

All year long, temperatures commonly prime 35°C, with little respite from the solar to be discovered within the pits. Accidents are widespread, with diggers often affected by deep cuts and lacerations from sharp stones hidden within the mud.

All this for $2-3 a day. However diggers have discovered to be resourceful.

Rice, the staple meals of the Sierra Leonean weight loss plan, is normally bought solely in bulk. To buy a 25-kilogram bag, sufficient to feed a household of 4 for 2 weeks, diggers are sometimes compelled to take out loans to cowl the $17 value. If bought on credit score, one bag can finally value as much as $44 after curiosity.

“To make a stew, they may also purchase damaged items of dried fish, palm oil, margarine and pepper, which they combine with cassava leaves from their again backyard,” says Princeton Williams, a supervisor of 1 the native artisanal mines. “With this technique, they’ll survive.”

Within the absence of different sources of earnings, diggers are likely to don’t have any choice however to just accept these circumstances.

“It’s a query of sophistication,” says Sahr Joe, a mining knowledgeable from the Community For Justice and Growth, a Sierra Leonean NGO. “If you happen to don’t have cash, you change into a slave.”

A tightly structured mode of manufacturing

Due to the exploitative circumstances, the predominant type of artisanal mining earned the epithet “Kosovo” – in reference to the brutality of the battle in former Yugoslavia.

Within the Kosovo system, diggers work only for a every day charge and usually are not eligible for any share of the positive aspects from the diamonds discovered. All of the revenue goes to the plot homeowners and their financiers, recognized regionally as “supporters”.

​​In a typical setting, homeowners of land believed to comprise diamonds seek for folks prepared to assist finance the mining operations, pay wages to staff and provide instruments and equipment. Supporters are drawn primarily from Kono’s monetary elite.

Plot homeowners sometimes obtain 30% of the income from a diamond, with supporters receiving the remaining 70%.

In recent times, the once-informal artisanal mining sector has undergone a strategy of marked formalisation.

For mining to begin, supporters should first buy a licence from the Nationwide Mining Company (NMA). If land is owned communally, they need to additionally negotiate and procure approval from the native tribal chief.

NMA officers pay common visits to websites, checking that operators possess a licence and that information are saved for diamonds discovered.

Nonetheless, a lot of the artisanal mining exercise going down in and round Koidu continues to flee authorities oversight.

One supporter, who requested to stay nameless, admits to working completely with no licence.

“If NMA comes, I simply give them $5 and so they go away me alone. Their staffers are all very poor,” he says. “To get approval from the chief, I purchased him a TV.”

Various preparations

Whereas the Kosovo system has come to dominate the artisanal mining sector, there are alternative routes for diggers to take part within the diamond financial system.

Within the so-called “tributor system”, diggers will be paid much less — sometimes underneath $1 a day — but when they discover a diamond, they’ll get a share from the revenue. The supporter negotiates the worth of the discovered stone with the digger and so they divide the income amongst themselves.

Diggers are usually interested in this method because of the prospect of discovering sizeable gems.

“I hope that in the future, I’ll make a fortune,” says Kai Pessima, who has labored as a digger for over 25 years. Nevertheless, he complains the cash his supporter pays him for the diamonds is rarely truthful.

Aiah Lahai, who additionally spent over 25 years within the diamond pits, has had comparatively higher fortune. Some years in the past, he uncovered a diamond that enabled him to purchase three small homes for his youngsters.

Regardless of this, he stays satisfied that the sum he was given was inadequate.

If the diggers disagree with the value provided by the mine proprietor’s supporter, the informally agreed employment phrases enable them to carry the diamond to a seller for impartial valuation.

There’s a catch, nevertheless.

Diamond costs are sometimes unfair

Diamond sellers, who function from dozens of little outlets that line the streets of Koidu, act as intermediaries between supporters and exporters in Freetown.

A seller’s place within the provide chain is maintained by means of valuation abilities. One must be educated in regards to the 1000’s of lessons of diamonds. Sellers additionally oversee an enormous community of brokers working all through Kono, who strategy miners with a view to preserve a gradual provide of gems to their outlets.

“To be a very good seller, it’s good to know diamond costs higher than others,” says Brima Lebbie, a neighborhood seller and candidate for the chair of the Kono District Diamond Sellers Affiliation.

Whereas Brima admits that diamond sellers usually are not all the time completely forthcoming with regards to the valuation of gems, he insists that that is a necessary a part of the trade.

“That is the enterprise of the revenue,” he says. “If the diamond costs have been laid on the desk and all people knew the worth, we’d as nicely surrender on mining and go away the diamonds within the floor.”

Regardless of ostensibly working independently, diamond sellers usually coordinate their costs, successfully appearing as cartels.

If a digger takes a diamond to the seller and doesn’t settle for the value, details about the gem and the provided worth spreads rapidly among the many sellers, who then refuse to pay greater than was initially provided.

“The extra the digger strikes round along with his diamond to get a greater worth, the extra the sellers unfold details about the diamond,” says Sahr Joe. “Ultimately the miner will most occasions be left with no choice however to both settle for the primary worth or go under that.”

Exploitation fuels diamond smuggling

As soon as purchased, the diamonds are transported to the capital of Freetown and authorized by licensed exporters to enter worldwide markets.

Nevertheless, not all diamonds uncovered in Sierra Leone are exported legally. Diamond smuggling, notoriously rampant throughout the civil struggle, stays a big drawback. 

Based on one estimate, between 50-90% of gems are smuggled in a foreign country, depriving the state treasury of potential export royalties.

Smuggling is pushed particularly by precarious employment circumstances and insufficient wages within the sector.

“The peasants steal the diamond from the supporter and promote it as a result of the lifetime of diggers is difficult,” says Sahr Joe.

Probably the most distinguished smuggling route leads by means of Guinea, which shares a porous border with Sierra Leone. Gems mined in Kono are transported throughout the border to the mining settlement of Bambakaro, the place they’re registered as originating in Guinea.

Typically, diamonds are taken out instantly by means of Lungi Worldwide Airport, Freetown. One native businessman, who requested to be known as “Sugarman”, detailed how he was in a position to assist a number of Europeans concerned within the worldwide diamond commerce smuggle $17 000 value of diamonds out of Sierra Leone.

“I drove them to the bush in Kono, the place I organized the transaction between them and three diggers. They introduced a bag with small items of diamonds. We paid in money and drove again to Freetown.”

Based on Sugarman, the Europeans made use of a authorities connection in Freetown to amass Sierra Leonean diplomatic passports, enabling them to go by means of airport safety unchecked.

Julius Mattai, the director of the Nationwide Mineral Company (NMA) appointed in 2019, has pledged to clamp down on diamond smuggling. Authorities have elevated border checks and employed extra officers to observe artisanal mines.

It’s unclear what results future measures might need on the viability of smuggling shifting ahead. In the end, until exploitation within the artisanal mining provide chain is addressed, diamond smuggling is prone to stay an issue.

Future challenges?

Many artisanal miners in Koidu are sceptical in regards to the long-term viability of the trade.

“Once I was youthful, my father would go away to the again yard, saying to my mom, ‘Begin getting ready meals, I’ll include the diamonds,’” remembers Sahr Joe. “This was when the land was productive and diamonds could possibly be present in shallow floor.”

Exhaustion of near-surface-level diamond deposits has given rise to the progressive mechanisation of artisanal mining.

“Now it’s a must to go deep, which prices cash,” says Sahr Joe.

This creates downward stress on wages. As well as, the elevated use of equipment has curbed the sector’s demand for labour, additional undermining the diggers’ potential to agitate for satisfactory pay.

It’s, subsequently, unsure how lengthy artisanal mining will proceed to supply even essentially the most primary of livings for these Sierra Leoneans who rely upon it.

There are additionally indicators that artisanal mining is starting to present technique to industrial mining. In Sefadu, a small settlement simply outdoors Koidu, diggers are unsure about their potential to proceed mining within the surrounding fields.

“This entire space has been given to Meya Mining for exploration,” says a supervisor of one of many artisanal mines. “For now, we will keep, but when they resolve to start out mining right here, we must go.”

Different fields have been licensed to Seawright, an American mining firm, and there are additionally rumours that Koidu Restricted is planning to additional develop its operations.

The folks of Koidu have up to now had virtually completely adverse experiences with Koidu Restricted, at current the one worldwide diamond mining firm working in Kono. Nonetheless, some are optimistic about industrial mining’s potential to help native growth.

Ibrahim Bockarie counts himself amongst such folks, regardless of nonetheless carrying a bullet wound that he obtained in 2007 throughout protests towards Koidu Restricted’s enlargement.

“I nonetheless see them as a chance,” he says.

This sense of optimism is inspired by an anticipated modification to Sierra Leone’s mining laws, which is presupposed to considerably enhance royalties paid by mining corporations to native communities.

“The bottom line is that they pay a fair proportion,” concludes Ibrahim.

This story was first printed by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Undertaking (OCCRP).