“Diamond Empowerment” is a series of articles, each one a case study, providing an objective overview of the contribution – both realized and still only potential – that the diamond mining industry makes to sustainable development in the countries where it is present.
The seventh article in the series looks at Sierra Leone, which between 1991 and 2002 was engulfed by a civil war largely funded by illicitly and brutally obtained diamonds. It led to the establishment of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which helped restore peace in the country and prop up its economic recovery.
A STORY OF WAR AND REDEMPTION:
CONFLICT DIAMONDS AND DIAMOND DEVELOPMENT
Artisanal miners (at work in Sierra Leone’s Kono Province. (Photo courtesy of GemFair, De Beers Group)
The rebel force’s ability to leverage the income it acquired through diamond smuggling, most of it funneled through Liberia, was to become a consistent feature Sierra Leone’s civil war. While Liberia’s diamond mining capacity was estimated to be no higher than 150,000 carats per annum, its imports into Belgium totaled more 31 million carats between 1994 and 1998. Many if not most of those goods had been pillaged from the country.
JUNE 24, 2025
Nestled on the southern coast of West Africa, the Republic of Sierra Leone is a small tropical nation whose landmass is roughly equivalent to the U.S. state of South Carolina. Between 1991 and 2002, it was ravaged by a civil war that claimed the lives of up to 75,000 people, forced 500,000 citizens to flee the country, and internally displaced around 2.5 million more.
The brutal conflict became recognized as ground zero for the original conflict diamond crisis, alongside the civil war raging at the same time in Angola. The horrors of this era led to the establishment of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which was launched in 2003.
Even today, Sierra Leone remains closely associated with this tumultuous history, with images of children maimed in the diamond fields etched into public memory. The 2006 film “Blood Diamond” further immortalized these events in popular culture.
The history of modern Sierra Leone can be traced back to the late 18th century when British authorities allowed approximately 2,500 former slaves, who had fought for the Crown in the American Revolutionary War, to settle on Africa’s Atlantic coast. This new settlement was aptly named Freetown.
Following the British Parliament’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Royal Navy crews brought thousands of freed Africans to Freetown, liberated from illegal slave shipments.
An aerial photo of Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown. First settled in 1787 by formerly enslaved Americans, it is the country’s largest city with a population of 1.34 million. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The discovery of diamonds in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone’s diamond story began in 1930 when geologists discovered the first rough diamond in the Kono District. A small team from the colonial government’s Geological Department stumbled upon a crystal in the Gboraba stream, and the next day, another was found at the same location. This discovery caught the attention of the De Beers-controlled Consolidated African Selection Trust (CAST), which sent a prospecting party to the country in March 1931. Soon after, two more diamonds were uncovered near Pava, about 80 kilometers south of the original discovery.
In 1935, British colonial authorities signed an agreement with the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), a subsidiary of CAST, granting De Beers exclusive mining rights for 99 years. In return, SLST would pay an income tax on profits, which was later increased. By 1937, the country was producing one million carats of rough diamonds annually.
The discovery of kimberlite pipes in 1948 and 1954, near Koidu and Tongo respectively, further solidified Sierra Leone’s status as a diamond-rich region. However, the monopoly held by De Beers was about to face a significant challenge.
Starting in the early 1950s, illicit miners began to swarm the diamond fields, particularly in Kono District, where an estimated 75,000 illegal miners operated. This led to rampant smuggling and a breakdown of law and order. Initially, the primary smuggling route was from Freetown to Beirut, with many dealers being Lebanese, who then funneled diamonds into European markets via Antwerp. Even as security tightened, smugglers adapted, using Liberia as a new route for their operations.
A map of Sierra Leone as it is today. With a landmass of 73,000 square kilometers, diamond mining has has predominantly taken place in eastern and southern parts of the country, much of it in Kono Province. The capital city of Freetown sits to the north of the Western Area
In 1955, the British colonial government revised its agreement with SLST, confining its operations to Yengema and Tongo while granting mining licenses to indigenous miners. This led to the introduction of the Alluvial Mining Scheme in 1956, allowing local miners to obtain licenses for a nominal fee. The initiative stabilized the diamond industry for about a decade, despite rampant smuggling still posing challenges.
Independence comes to Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961 under President Milton Margai, whose Sierra Leone Peoples Party had governed in partnership with the British since 1952. By 1968, diamond production had generated approximately $200 million, accounting for 70 percent of the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Yet smuggling remained rampant, with estimates suggesting that half of the diamonds were still being illegally exported.
The political landscape shifted dramatically in 1968 when a group of non-commissioned army officers invited Siaka Stevens, a former mining minister, police constable and trade unionist, to assume the presidency. Now as head of the All Peoples Congress (APC), he called for greater access to SLST’s holdings for the “common people.” Unfortunately, illicit mining and criminal activities surged, culminating in a heist where SLST’s entire monthly diamond haul was stolen at gunpoint in 1969.
In 1971, Stevens announced the formation of the National Diamond Mining Company (NDMC), effectively nationalizing SLST. The new company took over 51 percent of SLST’s shares. Its board of directors was composed of 11 members, six of whom nominees of the government.
SLST’s diamond shipments dramatically declined soon after. From a high of over two million carats in 1970, legitimate diamond exports dropped to 595,000 in 1980 and fell to only 48,000 carats in 1988.
In 1984, SLST sold its remaining shares to the Precious Metals Mining Company (PMMC), a company controlled by Jamil Said Mohamed, a Sierra Leonean-born Lebanese businessman, who was rumored to have been connected to the 1969 heist. In 1986, PMMC terminated its management of the NDMC on grounds that it was no a longer viable business.
Siaka Stevens, President of Sierra Leone from 1971 to 1985, who brought about the effective nationalization of the country’s largest diamind mining company.
Joseph Saidu Momoh, a major general in the Sierra Leonean army, who served as president of the country at the start of the civil war.
Charles Taylor, the Liberian dictator who ruled from 1989 to 2003, and who was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his support of the rebels in Sierra Leone’s civil war.
Cutting off the rebels’ funding
The military overthrow of the RUF may well have failed were it not backed up by a concerted effort to starve the rebel force of its primary source of funding, which were the illicitly obtained diamonds that had been smuggled out of the country and then sold on the world markets. These were the goods that later became known internationally as “conflict diamonds.”
On July 5, 2000, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1306, which prohibited the direct or indirect import of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone. In the resolution, the Security Council noted efforts by the diamond industry to work on a more transparent system of diamond trading, and reaffirmed that the legitimate diamond trade was of economic importance, with the potential to have a positive impact on prosperity and stability.
To further such initiatives, the UN said that the ban on exports would last for an initial period of 18 months, and the Government of Sierra Leone, with assistance from the international community and organisations, was requested to immediately establish a certificate of origin regime. This all occurred two months after the inaugural meeting of the Kimberley Process in South Africa
The unholy axis connecting the RUF to the Liberia’s Charles Taylor regime continued to concern the UN Security Council. On March 7, 2001, it passed Resolution 1343, which demanded that Liberia end its support for rebels in Sierra Leone and threatened the imposition of wide-ranging sanctions unless it complied.
Two months later, after it had been confirmed that the Liberian government was maintaining contacts with the rebels in Sierra Leone, the sanctions came into effect. They included a ban on rough diamond exports. It was the first time that the Security Council had imposed sanctions on one country for ignoring sanctions on another.
On December 19, 2001, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1385. Noting progress made in the Sierra Leone peace process and the efforts of the new government to extend its authority in diamond-producing areas with assistance from UNAMSIL, it still barred the export of rough diamonds, except those controlled by the government, from the country for a further 11 months, beginning on 5 January 2002. The council also welcomed the establishment of a Certificate of Origin regime for the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, which it hoped would curbing the flow of conflict diamonds.
On January 22, 2002, President Kabbah declared the Sierra Leone Civil War over. The Sierra Leone diamond embargo expired four and half months later, on June 4, 2003. By then, the KP Certification Scheme has been operating for five months.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Recovery in the shadow of the conflict
Sierra Leone’s recovery since end of the civil war has been steady but slow, and the war and its aftermath have cast a continuous shadow. In April 2012, a special court sitting in The Hague in the Netherlands found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in Sierra Leone’s civil war. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
The country remains among the poorest in West Africa, with GDP per capita projected to fall slightly from $883 in 2025 to $882 in 2026.
The country’s known diamond reserves are considerably lower than they were in their heyday. Production currently ranges between 500,000 carats and 800,000 carats per annum. In 2022, output reached 689,000 carats worth $142.9 million, but it fell to around 525,000 in 2023. Notable discoveries have included the 968.9-carat Star of Sierra Leone and a 709-carat alluvial diamond discovered in 2017.
Nearly all diamonds are exported as rough. In 2007, the Sierra Leone legislature ratified the Diamond Cutting and Polishing Act, which aimed to create a downstream cutting industry by regulating the legitimate trade through the licensing diamond cutters and polishers. But its results have met with very limited success at best, and exports continue to flow to Antwerp and Dubai.
An underground load and haul team at the Koidu Kimberlite Project. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Rebuilding the diamond industry
Mining drives Sierra Leone’s export economy but it contributes relatively little to recorded GDP or formal employment. Industrial mining jobs are limited, employing between 1 percent and 3 percent of the workforce.
The largest industrial diamond producer is Koidu Limited, which employs up to 1,300 people. It is a subsidiary of OCTÉA Limited, a locally registered company that was established in June 2002, acquiring the remainder of a 20 -year mining lease agreement for the Koidu Kimberlite Project that originally had been signed in 1995.
After the second successful post-war democratic election in 2007, the Government of Sierra Leone undertook a review of all mining agreements in the country. The process began in July 2008 and Koidu’s mining lease for the Koidu Kimberlite Project among the first to be reviewed. The term of the mining lease was extended to July 22, 2030, and may be renewed for a further period of 15 years.
At present, however, Koidu is in a state of flux, having faced a shutdown and layoffs due to a prolonged dispute over salaries and working conditions.
An artisanal miner from Sierra Leone uploading a photograph of a diamond he has recovered and geolocating his where the find was made, using equipment made available to him by GemFair. (Photo courtesy of GemFair, De Beers Group)
The promise provided by artisanal mining
Artisanal mining, however, remains a critically important factor in the Sierra Leonean economy. Although no empirical data on the exact number of people involved in artisanal mining has been published, the Sierra Leone government estimated in 2019 that artisanal mining and related activities provides livelihood support to at least 300,000 local citizens, and that upwards of 10 percent of Sierra Leoneans are impacted by artisanal diamond mining operations.
The operation that almost certainly has had the most exposure internationally in recent years is GemFair. Developed by De Beers, it provides artisanal miners in Sierra Leone with a viable and traceable route to the legitimate supply chain, as well training and a means to get a fair market price for what they produce.
GemFair was launched in 2018 in the Kono region of Sierra Leone and immediately started to provide services to registered artisanal miners at demarcated sites that had have been certified as compliant with the Maendeleo Diamond Standards (MDS).
When artisanal miners recover a diamond, they use an application on the tablet computer to register the stone, providing GSP-verification of the site at which it was mined, as well as basic gemological information.
The miner then delivers the diamond to the GemFair buying office where it is evaluated and an offer to purchase is made. If the miner accepts the offer, payment is prompt. However, miners are not obliged to sell their merchandise to GemFair, but, even if they do not, they will have been provided valuable information about the market value of diamonds in their possession, as well as the ability to sell their goods as Kimberley Process certified diamonds in the marketplace.
In 2024 GemFair purchased its 10,000th diamond since 2018, with the largest stone having been 69.3 carats. The program had grown from 14 participating mine sites to more than 400, collectively providing income to more than 6,000 miners and many more dependents and communities.
During interview on a local TV channel made during a visit he paid to Sierra Lone last year, De Beers CEO Al Cook commented on the transformation of the reputation of diamonds being produced in the country. Whereas 30 years ago, they were among the world’s most problematic, he noted, with the changes that have taken place they can be considered today as being among the most desirable.
An artisanal miner panning for diamonds in Sierra Leone. (Photo credit: Carmen Soler at Pexels.com)