This news just in: Akwatia is pretty much dead. Not that anyone would have noticed anyway. Ghana’s once-vibrant epicenter of diamond production is now a shell of its former self. I thought that the Belgium Market, once a bustling centre for diamond sales and exchange, where people in well-dressed clothes from the streets of Accra and abroad met rag-tag bunches of miners, was in a deteriorated state last year. But this year, it is even worse.
Akwatia is a classic example of what happens when donors simply do not care. An injection of donor funds could do a lot for the town. It could reenergize quite quickly if provided with just a small amount of support. Give me US$300,000 and I will set up an equipment-sharing scheme, which will provide the miners with the pumps and excavation technologies needed to access the diamonds located at lower depths which they are currently unable to extract with their shovels and buckets.
But the IFC is not interested because, well, de Beers and BHP Billiton are not interested, so there is no quick money to be made. The UK government is too fixated on fortifying Koidu Holdings in Sierra Leone, whilst the Canadians are enjoying watching their mining companies pillage developing countries of their gold. The Danes, meanwhile, believe that the key to development is the borehole, so 95 percent of their development work in sub-Saharan Africa seems to lead to the construction of a borehole (I am convinced if asked to build a road in Ghana, that DANIDA would somehow find a way to build at least three boreholes instead). The Chinese? It is not controversial enough (i.e. it is not a dam), so there is no chance of assistance from them.
Is not development for Africa about providing for Africans? Well, as the case of Akwatia shows, when there is nothing in it for the donor, it will not attract funding.
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