Sierra Leone’s ‘peace diamond’ dividend slow in coming

AFP
They were promised a “peace diamond” dividend in the Sierra Leone village of Koryardu after the stone they handed over for auction fetched $6.5 million (5.7 million euros) a year ago.
But they are still waiting to see the benefits.
“Absolutely nothing happened,” said Pastor Emmanuel Momoh, who manages the team of diggers that found the 709-carat diamond in March 2017, in eastern Kono province.
The idea of handing the diamond over to the government to sell was that it would generate money to be ploughed back into developing the local community.
But at the village school, Peter Baimoi, who helps teach its about 190 pupils, said there was no sign of the promised government funding.
With no qualified teachers in the village, parents rely on their children being taught by some of the better-educated local people who can read and write, like Bamoi who finished high school.
They do it voluntarily, the pastor said.
The government had promised that 15 percent of the total sale price — nearly one million dollars — would go into a fund for Koryardu to develop water, electricity, health and education.
A year on, Koryardu still has no electricity and no clinic — and the nearest state school is in Koidu, about 14 kilometres (nine miles) away.
The hamlet lies 10 kilometres from the main highway — and the road into the village is still impassable for six months of the year, during the rainy season.
– ‘Blood’ and ‘peace’ diamonds –
Sierra Leone, like some other African countries, is struggling to overcome the legacy of so-called “blood diamonds”, sold by warlords to finance conflicts. The west African country suffered a devastating civil war between 1991 and 2002. The international community set up the Kimberley certification system in 2003 to eliminate the problem, regulating the sale and export of diamonds. Experts said Koryardu’s diamond was the largest found in Sierra Leone in almost half a century. Momoh entrusted it to the administration of the country’s then president, Ernest Bai Koroma, who dubbed it the “peace diamond”.
The auction was originally scheduled to be held at the Central Bank in Freetown, but as the government thought the best offer made there — more than $7 million — was not high enough, they took the sale abroad.
The subsequent auction in New York netted $6.5 million.
– The legal option –
Under the sale agreement, 60 percent of the proceeds went straight to the government, out of which the village was to get its share, and 40 percent to Momoh, he said.