Dr M’zée Fula Ngenge, Chairman at African Diamond Council (ADC)

The Grand Betrayal: How the Kimberley Process Systematically Devalues Africa’s Diamonds

Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: The address delivered during the KP Plenary by the custodian, while elegantly framed, presents a profound misdiagnosis of the crisis facing the natural diamond industry. To attribute the precipitous decline in value and consumer confidence primarily to lab-grown competitors or urban security concerns in Western capitals is to ignore the foundational cancer at the core of the global diamond trade. 

The undeniable, revolutionary truth is that the Kimberley Process (KP) itself has become the single greatest liability for African diamond-producing nations. It has systematically devalued our most precious resource by permanently tethering it in the global consciousness to the specter of conflict. The KP, in a tragic irony, has perpetuated the very “blood diamond” narrative it was created to exterminate, thereby gifting the lab-grown industry its most powerful marketing tool, which is a guilt-free alternative. We are not merely facing market competition, but rather, facing the catastrophic failure of a governance model that has branded our diamonds with a permanent stain.

For the African Diamond Producers Association (ADPA), the continued, uncritical endorsement of the Kimberley Process (KP)) constitutes a strategic surrender of our economic sovereignty. The KP is not the acclaimed shield that it professes to be, but more of an obscure cage, which is a system designed to provide ethical absolution to consumer nations, while imposing the entire burden of enforcement and reputational risk upon us, the actual producers.

The Chair’s plea for shared contributions, while 27 nations default on their dues, lays bare the grotesque power dynamic that we are expected to subsidize a system that actively depresses our national incomes. The greatest danger for African diamond producing nations is not the KP’s collapse, but its continued existence in its current form. It lulls us into a false sense of compliance, while eroding the market value of our diamonds and preventing us from pursuing truly effective, modern governance. By legitimizing this broken Process, we cede our right to define, certify, and valorize our own natural wealth, outsourcing our economic destiny to a politicized and ineffective international committee that is no longer able to mask its entrenched and systemic disregard. 

The solution is not reform, but rather a complete and sovereign transcendence of the Kimberley Process (KP) framework. The African diamond industry must immediately initiate a system or solution, leveraging advanced technology for immutable, mine-to-finger traceability. To achieve this, African diamond producing nations must analyze and examine strategic communication from subjective industry lobby groups. This new standard must move beyond the KP’s anachronistic and narrow definition of conflict to encompass rigorous metrics for environmental stewardship, community equity, and fair labor, thereby creating a premium product category defined by verifiable integrity rather than the mere absence of war. Concurrently, we must cease being passive price-takers in a market we fundamentally supply. The establishment of the African Diamond Trust Fund (ADTF), financed by a modest export levy, allow us to manage supply strategically and, most critically, fund a generational marketing campaign to reclaim the narrative—”Diamonds of Africa: The Original, The Ethical, The Eternal.”

This sovereign initiative must be coupled with a deliberate strategy to bypass the KP’s convoluted trade channels. Africa must pioneer a radical new paradigm of mineral sovereignty by establishing direct, sovereign trade pacts with the world’s premier manufacturing and consumer markets. These alliances will grant preferential access to a new class of asset, such as diamonds authenticated under an un-hackable African provenance standard. This system will transcend mere certification by integrating immutable Certificates of Origin with a hybrid blockchain architecture—public for universal verification of ethical lineage, and private for securing commercial data. Each stone will be embedded with nanoscale tags, enabling both, surface and sub-surface identification, and will be accompanied by a formal Title of Ownership. This revolutionary step transforms a diamond from a mere commodity into a legally secured asset, akin to property or an automobile, creating an unprecedented benchmark for transparency, security, and value in the global luxury market. This will create a parallel, high-integrity market stream that will inevitably render the KP certificate a second-class credential. 

The short-term risk of market fragmentation is a necessary price to pay for long-term price stability and reputational control. The current path leads only to further devaluation and irrelevance. By seizing this moment of crisis to assert our sovereignty, we can transform our industry from within. African diamond-producing nations are pivoting from reliance on fallible institutions toward a new standard of trust, one guaranteed by immutable and independently verifiable data. We will no longer seek a more dignified seat at a broken table, however, we must invest more time into building our own tables, establishing our own standards, and in doing so, we must ensure that the immense value of Africa’s diamonds finally accrues to the people and nations from whose soil they are born.