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Diamond Development Initiative expands into the DRC
The Diamond Development Initiative, the organization working to improve the lives of artisanal miners around the globe, is partnering with Promines to improve the governance of metals mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, expanding the organization’s scope beyond diamonds.
Ottawa, Ontario--The Diamond Development Initiative, the organization working to improve the lives of artisanal miners around the globe, is partnering with Promines to improve the governance of metals mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, expanding the organization’s scope beyond diamonds.
The new DDI project aims to help the Democratic Republic of the Congo formalize the artisanal mining sector and reinforce management, as well as establish a foundation for the social and economic development of the artisanal mining communities.
The program will launch a process that provides for the regular registration and re-registration of artisanal miners, organizes the miners into associations and offers support in technical areas, entrepreneurship and pilot development projects to help improve the local communities.
The program will be placed in the provinces of Maniema, South Kivu and Province Orientale for artisanal miners involved in gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten mining.
“The new project in DRC takes us beyond diamonds because we and our partners feel that our knowledge and success in that field can now be applied to other minerals,” said the DDI’s Executive Director Dorothée Gizenga.
The Diamond Development Initiative brings together civil society organizations, governments and industry to help solve the problems faced by artisanal diamond diggers in developing countries.
In 2011 and 2012, the initiative registered more than 101,000 diamond artisanal miners in the Kasai provinces. Last year, it completed the registration of more than 11,300 gold artisanal miners in the Gold Tracking Project led by Partnership Africa Canada.
Promines is a technical assistance project funded by the World Bank and the British Department for International Development to work with the government of the DRC to restructure the mining sector in the Congo.
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