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OPENING up the diamond industry to increased local participation and speeding up the establishment of cutting and polishing centres should take centre stage at the 2014 Zimbabwe Diamond Conference slated for Harare next week, economic analysts have said.

The mining sector is viewed as a key player in turning around the country’s economy with keen interest placed on diamond sales, whose contribution tumbled this year compared to previous years.

Economic analysts said Zimbabweans are anxious to see increased contribution into the economy from the Chiadzwa diamonds and expect the conference to address the bottlenecks facing the exploitation of the precious resource.

“The diamond industry is not open to the local indigenous person. The sector should be opened to allow participation of small scale miners”, Trynos Nkomo, the president of Zimbabwe Miners Federation, said.

“Indigenous people discovered these diamonds and instead of getting rid of them, we need to allow them to exploit alluvial deposits, which don’t need much investment.

“They should participate at their own level, through consortiums and be assisted in setting up polishing and cutting centres and running jewellery shops.”

While the government is planning to centralise the exploitation of the mineral, Nkomo said the conference should involve locals and discuss their involvement.

“Our conferences should not be dominated by those who want to buy because they will make decisions against our favour. Without local participation our efforts are doomed,” he said.

Nkomo acknowledged the country has not reaped the desired yields from the diamonds since their discovery a few years ago because of sanctions and continued exportation of the mineral in its raw form.

“The diamond is a mineral for the rich whose market is monopolised by the West who’ve imposed sanctions on us. While we’ve attained the bureaucratic Kimberly Process Certification, we’re now battling with the value addition issue because we’re selling our diamonds in rough form,” he said.

“As a result we’re not getting much compared to those who buy from us and refine. We need to speed up the establishment of diamond cutting centres and thereafter we can reap more money.”

Nkomo said countries like India and Israel were swimming in profits and creating jobs from finished products made of Zimbabwean diamonds.

Economic analyst Kipson Gundani said Africa as a whole has not benefited from its vast mineral wealth because of lack of an institutional framework that guides profitable exploitation of natural resources.

He said the forthcoming conference should come up with concrete resolutions that would transform the sector rather than being a mere “talk show”.

“For me the solution lies in coming up with a strong institutional framework which should set up some compelling parameters to allow proceeds from natural resources to feed into the national economy and be invested in productive sectors,” he said.

“We also haven’t invested in the right infrastructure for value addition hence we benefit less. Natural resources are not benefitting Africa because of lack of an institutional framework that guides exploitation of these resources.”

Gundani said Africa was wrongly integrated in the global economy and “there seems to be a deliberate attempt not to industrialise the continent so that it remains a perennial supplier of raw materials”.

“It’s an economic war that we’ve to fight,” he added.

Zimbabwe is one of the largest world diamond players having produced 12,060,161,70 carats worth about $644 million in 2012.

In December last year the country got $10,5 million from 279,723 carats sold at Antwerp auction and $29,3 million from the sale of 380,626,24 carats in Dubai in March this year.

Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa will officiate at the two day conference today and Friday that is anchored on the theme “Completing Zimbabwe’s diamond potential for the future”.

He will share the stage with fellow ministers of mines from diamond producing countries such as Namibia, the DRC and South Africa, traders and seasoned foreign mining executives in the sector.