Chapter 1: What are the historical issues associated with diamond mining in Sierra Leone?
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Chapter 2: How do lab-grown diamonds threaten the traditional diamond industry?
Hi there, I'm Ed Butler.
Welcome to the second of our programmes on Business Daily from the BBC World Service, looking at the troubled state of the diamond industry. I'm in Sierra Leone, where artisanal diamond mining has become a way of life.
Well, I have not made a lot of money yet.
Sometimes, for the whole of the year, you can't get anything. For the whole of the year, you can't get anything. It is by the grace of God that you find a diamond.
Chapter 3: What impact has the closure of diamond mines had on local communities?
As we heard in yesterday's programme, there is a history of war here and also deep-rooted corruption. Can new lab-grown diamonds made in other countries take the place of traditionally mined gems?
People all over the world are going to get more conscious about extracting too much from the earth and the dependence of the industry on the naturally mined diamonds is going to be less significant.
Is there trouble in diamond land? The future of the industry, on Business Daily from the BBC. We're now walking into the flea market area of Koidu City. This is where they sell everything from old shoes to cleaning products to clothing, soap and soft drinks.
Chapter 4: How do women in Sierra Leone cope with the challenges of the diamond economy?
There's still plenty of people around, but they say the trade is down here substantially in the last few months.
It is not really easy, but you try. You have to push. You have to find means.
Is it worse than it used to be here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Really, it is not easy, really. Right, we're now stepping into Benzer Market.
Chapter 5: What are the environmental concerns related to lab-grown diamonds?
This is the main fish market in the middle of the town. It's a huge hallway with a big corrugated iron roof. There are hundreds of people in here. What's your name, madam?
My name is Finda Konomani.
And Finda, what are you selling here?
Fish. This one, herring. This one, pollock.
So how much profit do you make?
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Chapter 6: How are traditional diamond companies responding to the rise of lab-grown diamonds?
I mean, you take home at the end of the day. 50. That's all? Just a couple of dollars? Yes. Wow. Is business less good than it used to be? Has it got worse?
Not fighting. First time, this one we sell 300.
Chapter 7: What is the future outlook for the diamond industry amidst these changes?
In local Creole, Finder tells me how hard trade has become recently due to the closure of the country's largest diamond mine, based here in Koidu town in the east of the country. Victoria Avopombo has seen the wider consequences. She's a women's rights activist based in the town.
There was a lot of saga, a lot of deprivation, a lot of issues. Laying down 1,000 workers, it was a chaos. So women were coming to us asking us, this is our pain, this is our challenge, our husbands, our children are no longer going to school. Some have five kids. Some marriages have already collapsed.
In fact, the abuses case is increasing every day just because of the closure of that mining company.
More abuse, more robbery.
Chapter 8: How does consumer perception affect the diamond market today?
More robbery, more abuse. Even in the sites, a lot of things are happening.
What are people doing to get by?
Yes, some of them are digging gold because the diamond is now scarce. The crime rate is increasing every day. Breaking of houses, the child abuse, the domestic violence. Violence has increased to a higher level just because of this mine economy. The mine economy is closed and the government is not saying anything and the workers are suffering. And there's no money.
Some miners are switching to this, digging for diamonds in any free plot of land they can find. It has been a part-time endeavour across the region for decades. It's often unregulated, with diamonds found frequently smuggled out to avoid the payment of duties. I'm standing in an open valley.
There are huge pits in front of me, pits filled with orange sandy water, men digging at the sand along the banks and others sifting, silting through the mud and the gravel, all aiming for one thing, to find the rich, precious stones that lie abundantly, naturally in this landscape. Whenever we come, We take the soil and through it, it is the gravel. There we find the diamond.
It's kind of like a bright blue, grey soil that you're crushing in your fingers now. And inside, you have the stones. I'm fingering it now. Yeah, sometimes the diamond lies in it. So it'd just be a tiny, tiny little fragment, like a tiny piece of dirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like this. How much money do you make normally doing this work? For me?
Well, I have not made a lot of money yet.
Sometimes, for the whole of the year, you can't get anything. For the whole of the year, you can't get anything. It is through the grace of God that you find a diamond. It is not a spot. Thin pickings, then. Decades of extraction mean the remaining worthwhile stones now lie mostly at a deeper level, beyond the reach of picks and shovels. So this is what it's all about.
I'm holding in my hand now a stone, a diamond. It's maybe the size of my small fingernail, the smallest fingernail, and it's, what, 12 carats, apparently. It's got some imperfections on the outside. This is a rough diamond. But it's worth, I'm told, even here, before it leaves the country, $80,000 to $100,000, this small stone.
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