Angola made 10.7 million carats of diamonds from January to September
A government official said on Friday that Angola made 10.7 million carats of rough diamonds in the nine months ending in September. The country hopes to set another record for this year’s haul.
In 2024, the country in southwest Africa made a record 14 million carats of rough diamonds. This made it the third biggest producer of diamonds in the world, after Botswana and Russia. This year, it wants to reach 14.8 million carats.
Secretary of State for Mineral Resources Janio Correa Victor said that output was 23.2% higher at the halfway point of the year, but he did not give numbers for the first nine months of 2024 to compare them to.
Victor told an event for the diamond business that the higher output was due to the Catoca Mining Company and the Luele Mining Company being able to run smoothly.
Endiama, the state-owned diamond company of Angola, and Taadeen Investment LLC, a branch of Oman’s national wealth fund, own both companies together.
In 2024, the Omani company took over as Angola’s partner in state-owned diamond projects from the Russian company Alrosa. This was because Alrosa was hit with penalties after Russia invaded Ukraine two years before.
Victor said that Angola’s rough diamond exports had lost 14% of their value in nine months, even though the amount of diamonds sent had doubled. This was because the prices of the valuable stones had dropped.
He said this was because of competition from fake diamonds, the COVID-19 pandemic, trade tariffs put in place by the US, and the fact that the Chinese market had been flat since then.
Angola is the second-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria. Since the end of a civil war in 2002, the country has increased the amount of diamonds it produces. Before that, along with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone, this country was thought to be one of the three main sources of conflict diamonds.
Angola has made an offer to buy a majority stake in De Beers, which was put on the market by Anglo American (AAL.L), which is in the process of restructuring. This could lead to a fight with Botswana, which also wants to control the huge diamond miner.
