In her address to the 6th Forum of the Africa-Belgium Business Week, held in the Belgian town of Genval, Marie-Chantal Kaninda, Executive Director of World Diamond Council (WDC), expressed the WDC’s optimism that Central African Republic (CAR) will soon be able to resume the unrestricted export of rough diamonds, supported by the Kimberley Process Certification System, and help turn the CAR resolutely towards its development.
Earlier this week, Ms. Kaninda delivered the opening address in her capacity as Honorary President of the forum, which is organized by Africa Rise, a Belgian organization that promotes Africa’s economic and social emergence through contacts between its entrepreneurs and their counterparts from other parts the world. The guests of honor at the forum were Faustin Archange Touadera, President of the Central African Republic (CAR), and Charles Michel, the Belgian Prime Minister.
While a peace agreement was signed in February by the CAR government and 14 rebel groups, aimed at ending the country’s seven year-long civil war, the CAR remains under Kimberley Process suspension, forbidding diamond exports from areas falling outside of the so-called green zones in the western part of the country, from which diamond exports are approved monthly by a monitoring team, its government has been working closely with the Kimberley Process to enable the sale of artisanally-mined alluvial stones.
