Marie-Chantal Kaninda, who served as the World Diamond Council’s Executive Director for two years has left the organisation as of August 31, 2019. She will, however, “continue to provide services to the organisation through the Annual General Meeting in Antwerp in October and the KP Plenary Meeting in New Delhi in November”, Kaninda said in a signed piece bidding farewell to the organisation.

She also said that she was leaving the organisation as a new opportunity had presented itself and as she put it, “at this stage of my career I feel that I must seize it”.

Paying fulsome tribute to the organisation and its leadership Kaninda said: “I will be forever grateful to the leadership of the WDC for offering me the opportunity to manage the affairs of this great organisation, and having the confidence to make what at the time may have seemed an unorthodox choice.”

Kaninda underscored the fact that she had joined the organisation “with a good deal of experience in the diamond and extraction industries”, but, “clearly as an African woman who had spent most of her professional life serving the interests of miners and mining communities in the continent where I reside”.

She hails from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country where the mining sector is dominated by artisanal miners.

“While acutely aware of the risks involved in artisanal mining, I was and I remain convinced about the opportunities for the better future diamond resources can provide to such individuals and communities, who often live in abject poverty,” she said.

She added: “What I had hoped my appointment would underscore, for which I should stress I received tremendous support from the WDC presidents and officers under whom I served, was that our organisation represents both the upstream and downstream interests of the diamond industry, where the wellbeing and future of all miners and their dependents in the producing countries are inexorably linked to the integrity of diamonds and diamond jewellery in the markets where they are sold.”

In her farewell letter not only did Kaninda pay a “special tribute” and thank WDC President Stephane Fischler, but also went on to thank the other office bearers and her colleagues at WDC, with whom she had interacted closely over the two years she held office.

Pic Cap: Marie-Chantal Kaninda, then WDC Executive Director, addressing the Kimberley Process Intersessional Meeting in Antwerp, Belgium, in June 2018.