Martin Endjala
The Ministry of Mines and Energy says that it is willing to extend its support to the vision of establishing a diamond training institution in the country.
This comes after the Namib Desert Diamond Company (Namdia) expressed its vision to establish a diamond polishing training institution in Namibia.
“The Ministry is aware that Namdia at some point, has expressed its long-term vision at one of the stakeholder’s engagement sessions with the Media. During the Session, Namdia expressed its willingness to establish a polishing institute in the Country.
As a Ministry charged with ensuring sustainable development of Namibia’s mineral resources including diamonds, we are in support of the idea for Namibia to have an institution which would produce the much-needed skills in diamond polishing”.
The Mines and Energy Minister, Tom Alweendo responded to Windhoek Observer’s questions on the matter.
Alweendo explained that the Ministry of Mines and Energy has always extended its support when needed and that falls within its mandate to all its licensees and Public Enterprises including Namdia by pooling resources towards developmental project which is of national interest, such as a (Diamond Cutting and Polishing Institution).
He reiterated that the Ministry is committed to continuing to render the necessary support that would be required by Namdia to realise its vision.
When asked about his advocacy for value addition to minerals resources, and whether this is the right time for Namibia to build an institution of that sort, Alweendo was quick to state that he is of the view that value addition is key and enabler for developing the country and the Namibian citizens.
However, he said that it would depend on the availability of necessary skills in the country among others, while adding that to have an institution that develops skills such as diamond polishing, could be a blessing as would have achieved a milestone of it being the first of its kind locally.
“This implies that Namibia will have basic polishing skills firsthand and will only import specialised polishing skills (for larger and fancy diamonds) from outside the country, not for a longer period, and gradually reducing the current trend,” said the Minister.
He noted that the establishment of such an institution would have a significant positive impact towards job creation, poverty reduction and economic growth just to mention a few. This implies that interested and qualified Namibians would be trained and that would reduce unemployment among the youth. Similarly, those employed would be able to sustain their families’ livelihoods thus reducing poverty and ultimately contributing towards economic growth.
Namdia’s spokesperson Beverly Coussement, recently said that it is the state-owned- enterprise’s vision to have such an institute in the country, however, at the moment it remains just a vision, they are still drawing up a plan on how to go about it and they still need to look at how they can fund such a project but the plan remains alive.
Meanwhile, the outgoing Mines and Energy acting Executive Director Bryan Eiseb revealed that, as of November 2023, the Ministry has a record of 14 licensed diamond cutting and polishing companies which are fully operational, while eight are in different stages of establishing themselves. On average, Eiseb said that an estimated 1000 Namibians are employed in diamond cutting and polishing factories, and prominent diamond polishing companies operating in Namibia are from countries like Israel with 25 percent, India with 70 percent and others five percent.
