Dirty Looks in the Akwatia Diamond Market

Last week, I visited Akwatia for the first time, despite having carried out research on mining in Ghana for nearly a decade. It is indeed a shell of its former self, in large part because the parent company, Ghana Consolidated Diamonds (GCD), has pretty much ceased operating. The purchasing arrangement inaugurated under GCD was unique, and provided tributers with security of tenure and, most importantly, a job. A decision by Antwerp to regulate exports of Ghanaian diamonds has further complicated things. Apparently, UN people have concluded that Ivorian diamonds are being smuggled into Ghana and exported as Ghanaian diamonds. Major buyers and retailers do not want to be caught up in buying ‘conflict diamonds’, and I see their point. But what I do not see is the justification for such a sweeping generalization, particularly when only isotopic analysis can differentiate between an Ivorian and Ghanaian diamond. Is this analysis being carried out? I hardly think so.

Every morning between 8 am 12 AM, the diamond buyers – or the few who can afford to sponsor diamond miners and/or purchase their product – converge in the centre of town. I was told that during the heyday, as many as 500 buyers were packed into its narrow streets. On the day I went, however, there were fewer than 40. ‘Business is tough these days,’ explained one buyer. ‘It is because of the Kimberley Process.’ Recognition of Kimberley signifies that these guys know what is going on – specifically, that forces beyond Ghana are responsible for their fate. This could explain why I received innumerable dirty looks throughout the day: perhaps they thought I worked for the UN or was, in fact, Mr Kimberley. The most depressing, and indeed identifiable, feature of Akwatia is its ‘(boom) bust-like’ appearance: abandoned stalls, shops selling goods that were once affordable luxuries, and empty hotels. With the exodus of mining, of course, has come poverty, which can only be fixed with, well, the resurgence of mining.

So let us hope for the sake of Akwatia’s people that the diamond embargo is lifted. After all, it has not been a location of civil violence, so why should its people also be victims of what unfolded in Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and Angola?