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Diamond Sector (diamond + sector)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Retrenchments In the Diamond Sector

AFRICA RESEARCH BULLETIN: ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL SERIES, Issue 3 2009
Article first published online: 1 MAY 200
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

Building Peace with Conflict Diamonds?

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2009
Development in Sierra Leone, Merging Security
ABSTRACT This article examines the merging of security and development agendas in primary commodity sectors, focusing on the case of peace-building reforms in Sierra Leone's diamond sector. Reformers frequently assume that reforming the diamond sector through industrializing alluvial diamond mining will reduce threats to security and development, thereby contributing to peace building. Our findings, however, suggest that the industrialization of alluvial diamond mining that has taken place in Sierra Leone has not reduced threats to security and development, as it has entailed human rights abuses and impoverishment of local communities without consolidating state fiscal revenues and trust in local authorities. This suggests alternative strategies for resource-related peace-building initiatives, which we consider at the end of the article: the decriminalization of informal economic activities; the prioritization of local livelihoods and development needs over central government fiscal priorities and foreign direct investment; and better integration between local economies and industrial resource exploitation. [source]

,New spaces' for change?: Diamond governance reforms and the micro-politics of participation in post-war Sierra Leone

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2010
Roy Maconachie
Abstract While the majority of research carried out on diamonds and development in Sierra Leone has focused on debates concerning the role that diamonds played in the country's civil war of the 1990s, little attention has been directed towards understanding how the emergence and consequences of ,new spaces' for citizen engagement in diamond governance are shaping relationships between mining and political economic change in the post-war period. Recent fieldwork carried out in two communities in Kono District illustrates how the emergence of such spaces,although much celebrated by government, donors and development practitioners,may not necessarily be creating the ,room for manoeuvre' necessary to open up meaningful public engagement in resource governance. The analysis focuses on one recent governance initiative in the diamond sector,the Diamond Area Community Development Fund (DACDF),which aims to strengthen citizen participation in decision-making within the industry, but has frequently been at the centre of controversy. In framing and articulating socio-environmental struggles over resource access and control in Sierra Leone's post-war period of transition, the article highlights how the emerging geographies of participation continue to be shaped by unequal power relationships, in turn having an impact on livelihood options, decision-making abilities and development outcomes in the country's diamondiferous communities. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]