De Beers Group has taken a number of initiatives to ensure that diamond mining helps empower communities within the country, and recently provided updates on two such beneficiation projects – in Canada and South Africa.

In Canada, the Group said that it will begin accepting applications for nine entrance scholarships for Canadian females applying for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and STEM-like baccalaureate programs at Canadian post-secondary institutions this fall.

The new scholarships will be offered through Scholarships Canada, each worth US$ 4,800 and can be extended for a further two years based on certain conditions. These are being offered in addition to six US$ 7,000 entrance scholarships being awarded at each of the University of Waterloo and the University of Calgary this fall.

Both programmes are part of De Beers Group’s commitment to provide 67 years of combined education funding for Canadian women between 2018 and 2021 working in partnership with UN Women’s HeForShe movement.

“These nine new scholarships improve opportunities for females to pursue careers in areas that are traditionally male-dominated, especially in the Indigenous and Northern communities where we work,” explained Kim Truter, CEO of De Beers Canada. “Feedback from our scholarship recipients to date has been very positive, with many telling us the funding has helped remove economic barriers which allows more time for them to study and succeed in their chosen field.”

Special preference for the scholarships, as well as awards at the Universities of Calgary and Waterloo, will be given to females from northern Ontario, southern Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

The scholarships are just one component of the De Beers Group-UN Women partnership that will see a total of more than US$ 3 million invested by De Beers Group in Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa to 2020. Additional activities and investments are planned across Canada between now and 2021.

Recent media reports also highlighted the completion of the first phase of the Enterprise Development Project for Diamond Beneficiators pilot project being run by De Beers in South Africa.

The three-year programme, facilitated by De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa (DBSSSA) in partnership with business incubation experts Raizcorp, included formal, curriculum-based learning in parallel with mentorship in business strategy, finance, sales, marketing and personal development, the reports stated.

As part of the programme, each participating company received an allocation of rough diamonds from De Beers, in line with their market requirements and capacity.

In addition, the project has facilitated local and international market access for the five companies and sponsored their participation at international trade shows, including the Hong Kong Jewellery and Gem Fair and JCK Las Vegas.

Through the business acumen and entrepreneurship skills acquired from the De Beers sponsored Raizcorp programme, the companies have seen significant turnover growth and new jobs have been created, the reports said.

The project also proved ground breaking in its support for women in the diamond cutting and polishing industry, with two of the five participating companies being 100% women-owned, another 50% woman-owned.

Peter Phemelo Moeti, Senior Vice President of DBSSSA, was quoted as saying: “We believe that this project gives South Africans the opportunity to play their full part in unlocking the beauty and everlasting value from their most precious resource.”

Allon Raiz, CEO of Raizcorp, was reported to have said: “The De Beers entrepreneurial development programme is very important for the diamond industry and represents an authentic first step in transforming the industry.”

De Beers Group is in the process of reviewing the project with the aim to securing strategic partners to ensure the project takes its rightful place as an industry wide project in South Africa, the reports concluded.

Pic courtesy: De Beers

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