African American aviation pioneer, John Robinson, who constructed his first airplane out of spare automobile parts in the 1930s, found opportunity in Africa when he went to the aid of embattled Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia before World War II. Today Mr. Robinson is known as one of the founders of Africa's most reliable premier Ethiopian Airways.
Like Haile Selassie, in 2017 Neema Mushi, founder of Licious Adventure in Tanzania, was eager to make a U.S. connection. She was looking for U.S. companies willing to carry the African textiles and other items her shop sells to the tourists her company's guides lead up Mount Kilimanjaro and to the beaches of Zanzibar. Now, however, not U.S. companies but Chinese ones, such as Anningtex, Buwanas, Hitarget, and Sanne, fill Ms. Mushi's shelves with mass produced, Chinese-made "African" textiles, called kitenge. Locally-owned African textile producers in Nigeria and Ghana, unable to compete with lower-cost Chinese goods, have gone out of business.
The point is: if you are an importer; photo journalist or documentary filmmaker looking for a story; someone interested in trying out a new teaching or low-cost home construction technique; a miner or an adventurer seeking opportunities of any kind, Africa welcomes you.
Two essential ingredients help you get started: money and contacts. With a nest egg, car to sell, or Sugar Daddy, you can plunk down $1000-plus for an airplane ticket and head for Africa immediately. Although a crowdfunding appeal, saving from a job, or persuading a media outlet to fund your project, will delay your take off, keep an eye on the prize.i Also consider submitting a Scholar Registration to Birthright AFRICA at birthrightafrica.org. This new non-profit in New York City is the brainchild of Walla Elsheikh, an immigrant from Sudan who began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs. His vision is to send young African-Americans on free trips to Africa to explore and connect with their cultural roots. On these trips, young adults also have an unique opportunity to discover ways they could begin their careers in Africa.
Economic officers in foreign Embassies and consulates should be able to provide helpful local contacts in Africa, but don't neglect seeking assistance from missionary communities. Religious orders in your home country can put you in touch with their superiors in African host countries. For example, in Namibia, Africa, China built a container terminal and nearby oil storage installation at Walvis Bay, and South Africa's De Beers Group extracted 1.4 million carats from the offshore coastal waters. I also saw Sister Patricia Crowley, at the St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, was about to leave for Windhoer, Namibia, to serve as spiritual director on a one year assignment at a Benedictine missionary community there. An appointment with Sister Patricia in Chicago could lead to a letter introducing your purpose and background to those who could help you in Namibia.
Likewise, visiting communities of Dominican nuns in a home country could provide contacts with the nuns who teach girls to make a living by sewing and using a computer in Bukoba, Tanzania, and the nuns who teach farmers to plant hybrid tomato crops that withstand heat and insect infestations in Nairobi, Kenya.
On their outposts in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, the Jesuit order can provide inspiration and information for those investigating Africa careers. While assigned to the Jesuit Refugee Service in East Africa, Father James Martin, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, helped set up tailoring shops, several small restaurants, a bakery, a little chicken farm, and the Mikono Centre that sells African handicrafts. By following in the path of African-inspired Picasso and a Mozambican wood carver who sold a three-foot-tall ebony sculpture at the Mikono Centre, artists from around the world may find fulfillment working in Africa.
In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah would appreciate a visit from a journalist willing to investigate the complicated land ownership rights, deeds held by chiefs, and government's incomplete database of mining concessions. Although the bishop thought the church held a legal deed to land a chief donated for a clinic and nursing school, Chinese miners began digging "Mr. Kumar's" gold mine on the property.
Ghana is not the only African country in need of land use planners, legal assistance, doctors, teachers and others willing to discover career opportunities in Africa.
Showing posts with label mining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mining. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2020
Thursday, March 21, 2019
On the Mexican Side of the Border
The days of confining children in tent cities on the dusty Texas side of the Rio Grande are over. Guards need no longer bar the concerned visitors who set red balloons afloat over the camps to show those inside someone cared about them.
But migrants still cross into Mexico from Guatemala, Honduras, and
El Salvador. In the five-year span from 2010 to 2015, the UN estimates over 300,000 left Central America. The Economist magazine (March 16, 2019) mentioned 8,000 left in January and February this year.
Mexico understands the plight of Central Americans who seek asylum from government repression of the poor, gang violence, and soldiers, like those who murdered San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero and four nuns in 1980 and the environmental activist, Berta Caceres, in Honduras in 2016. Besides fleeing violence, migrants also risk the long, hot and dangerous journey north when they are displaced by mining activities and when coffee and other crop prices drop or when a lack of rainfall, heat, and a plague of insects reduce crop yields. (Also see the earlier post, "How Can Bananas Be 29 Cents A Pound?")
Since Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador became Mexico's President in December, 2018, his humanitarian welcome has cut into the estimated $2.5 billion organized crime was used to pocketing for trafficking migrants through Mexico to the U.S. border. As requested by Washington, D.C. migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. now remain in Mexico until close to their court dates.
But migrants still cross into Mexico from Guatemala, Honduras, and
El Salvador. In the five-year span from 2010 to 2015, the UN estimates over 300,000 left Central America. The Economist magazine (March 16, 2019) mentioned 8,000 left in January and February this year.
Mexico understands the plight of Central Americans who seek asylum from government repression of the poor, gang violence, and soldiers, like those who murdered San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero and four nuns in 1980 and the environmental activist, Berta Caceres, in Honduras in 2016. Besides fleeing violence, migrants also risk the long, hot and dangerous journey north when they are displaced by mining activities and when coffee and other crop prices drop or when a lack of rainfall, heat, and a plague of insects reduce crop yields. (Also see the earlier post, "How Can Bananas Be 29 Cents A Pound?")
Since Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador became Mexico's President in December, 2018, his humanitarian welcome has cut into the estimated $2.5 billion organized crime was used to pocketing for trafficking migrants through Mexico to the U.S. border. As requested by Washington, D.C. migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. now remain in Mexico until close to their court dates.
Monday, June 4, 2018
China Stakes New Claim to Arctic
When warming from climate change uncovered portions of the ice sheet on Greenland, Chinese tourists arrived as did Chinese mining companies interested in the country's newly accessible deposits of rare earth minerals, said to be the world's tenth largest known deposit. In September, 2019, London's Rainbow mining company announced it was ready to expand rare earth production in Burundi to twenty times its current output in order to compete with China, already the world's major extractor of the hazardous-to-mine rare earth elements. Rare earth elements have a wide variety of uses in hybrid cars, catalytic converters, wind turbines, aircraft engines, cell phones, film making, oil refining, x-rays, powerful magnets for MRI machines, control rods in nuclear reactors, and for TV and computer screens.
To date, Greenland's 56,000 citizens rely on fishing exports and an annual grant from Denmark. An independence movement lobbies to free Greenland from Denmark, and Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen sees potential ties with China as a way to eliminate the need for Denmark's help. (The earlier post, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder," describes China's earlier attempt to stake a claim in the Arctic.)
Denmark is not opposed to granting Greenland's independence. But it now does use Greenland as a way to claim Arctic land and the U.S. military base on Greenland to claim an exemption from paying its share of NATO funding. (In 2019, Norway's leader termed President Trump's attempt to purchase Greenland "ridiculous.")
To date, Greenland's 56,000 citizens rely on fishing exports and an annual grant from Denmark. An independence movement lobbies to free Greenland from Denmark, and Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen sees potential ties with China as a way to eliminate the need for Denmark's help. (The earlier post, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder," describes China's earlier attempt to stake a claim in the Arctic.)
Denmark is not opposed to granting Greenland's independence. But it now does use Greenland as a way to claim Arctic land and the U.S. military base on Greenland to claim an exemption from paying its share of NATO funding. (In 2019, Norway's leader termed President Trump's attempt to purchase Greenland "ridiculous.")
Friday, October 13, 2017
Technology's Hard Sell and the Public's Role in the Lithium-Ion Battery Industry
New technologies require public acceptance and industry risk takers. What if consumers had refused to bring nuclear-powered microwaves into their homes or to let doctors use lasers to cure diseases? I've gained new respect for the physics teacher I had who assigned students to weekly reports on journal articles describing break-through scientific advances. Unless a country enters the world's economy late or a hurricane or earthquake destroys infrastructure, it is an uphill slog for a new technology to compete with entrenched technologies.
Top executives recognize the challenge of creating a corporate culture, much less a public culture, attuned to welcoming technological change. At a recent conference, CEOs of 100 leading companies in 17 different industries concluded it is easier to incorporate rapidly changing technology into an existing system than it is to create a corporate culture willing to embrace technological changes.
Consider the introduction of lithium-ion batteries. In the United States, electric cars using these batteries need to compete with existing cars, and they require charging stations to replace gas stations. As a clean energy source, huge lithium-ion battery packs that provide power to electricity grids need to compete with coal and natural gas. When a leak at California's Aliso Canyon natural gas facility forced the San Diego Gas & Electric company and Southern California Edison to try to provide Los Angeles and San Diego with electricity from grid-scale batteries, AES Energy Storage built a lithium-ion battery installation in under six months, compared to the years it takes to obtain permits to construct polluting power plants near heavily populated urban areas.
Logic suggests car manufacturers and electric companies avoid "marketing myopia" by seeing themselves with a wide lens that positions them in transportation and energy industries that need to invest in up-and-coming alternatives. Companies are beginning to do just that. AES and Siemens now have a joint venture. California Edison is working with Tesla, known for manufacturing electric cars, and Mercedes-Benz and BMW also are involved in stationary power storage projects with utilities.
Nonetheless, reliance on private investment limits the development and use of lithium-ion battery technology. Again, there is a role for teachers and students who take a realistic view of what fosters technological advances. Denying the effect of fossil fuels on climate change does nothing to encourage government investment in clean energy from lithium-ion batteries or tax relief for battery manufacturers. And how about government support for lithium exploration (top producers are Australia, Chile, Argentina, and China) and safe disposal of used lithium or, better yet, support for efforts to "mine" recycled lithium?
In fact, Elon Musk claims all the nickel used in his Tesla electric car batteries is reusable at the end of a battery's life. If true, that is good news, because nickel mining, mainly in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, and the Philippines, kicks up sulphur dioxide and pollutes rivers with oxidized nickel waste. Dr. David Santillo at Greenpeace's research laboratories reports crushing and transporting nickel produces dust containing copper, cobalt, and chromium, as well as nickel, that causes respiratory problems and cancer. Rather than continue to mine poorer and poorer strains of nickel, Santillo suggests an effort to recover and reuse nickel already extracted.
Wise young people need to focus on the new career opportunities new technologies present.
Top executives recognize the challenge of creating a corporate culture, much less a public culture, attuned to welcoming technological change. At a recent conference, CEOs of 100 leading companies in 17 different industries concluded it is easier to incorporate rapidly changing technology into an existing system than it is to create a corporate culture willing to embrace technological changes.
Consider the introduction of lithium-ion batteries. In the United States, electric cars using these batteries need to compete with existing cars, and they require charging stations to replace gas stations. As a clean energy source, huge lithium-ion battery packs that provide power to electricity grids need to compete with coal and natural gas. When a leak at California's Aliso Canyon natural gas facility forced the San Diego Gas & Electric company and Southern California Edison to try to provide Los Angeles and San Diego with electricity from grid-scale batteries, AES Energy Storage built a lithium-ion battery installation in under six months, compared to the years it takes to obtain permits to construct polluting power plants near heavily populated urban areas.
Logic suggests car manufacturers and electric companies avoid "marketing myopia" by seeing themselves with a wide lens that positions them in transportation and energy industries that need to invest in up-and-coming alternatives. Companies are beginning to do just that. AES and Siemens now have a joint venture. California Edison is working with Tesla, known for manufacturing electric cars, and Mercedes-Benz and BMW also are involved in stationary power storage projects with utilities.
Nonetheless, reliance on private investment limits the development and use of lithium-ion battery technology. Again, there is a role for teachers and students who take a realistic view of what fosters technological advances. Denying the effect of fossil fuels on climate change does nothing to encourage government investment in clean energy from lithium-ion batteries or tax relief for battery manufacturers. And how about government support for lithium exploration (top producers are Australia, Chile, Argentina, and China) and safe disposal of used lithium or, better yet, support for efforts to "mine" recycled lithium?
In fact, Elon Musk claims all the nickel used in his Tesla electric car batteries is reusable at the end of a battery's life. If true, that is good news, because nickel mining, mainly in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, and the Philippines, kicks up sulphur dioxide and pollutes rivers with oxidized nickel waste. Dr. David Santillo at Greenpeace's research laboratories reports crushing and transporting nickel produces dust containing copper, cobalt, and chromium, as well as nickel, that causes respiratory problems and cancer. Rather than continue to mine poorer and poorer strains of nickel, Santillo suggests an effort to recover and reuse nickel already extracted.
Wise young people need to focus on the new career opportunities new technologies present.
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Protecting What Is Prized Isn't Easy
If a famous artist's painting is one-of-a-kind and drug trafficking cartels prosper, what will people do? Some will be in the market buying and selling. Others will steal, kill, risk their lives, and try to hide their actions.
Since those who do things like smuggle slaves in cargo containers and poach rhinoceros horns at night, like it or not young people need to learn to be suspicious and vigilant, to look for abuses, and to ask authorities to undertake the often dangerous security measures needed to regulate or stop these activities. The challenges presented by lumber/wood harvesting, diamond and gold mining in Africa, and the trade in elephant ivory and exotic birds were discussed in earlier posts. Here, let's look at what is involved in regulating the mining of and trade in jade and in protecting an endangered species: the gray wolf.
In Myanmar (formerly knows as Burma), earning a living by finding and selling jade gems shares the same drawbacks as searching for diamonds and gold in Africa. Big Chinese companies connected with the Burmese military hold mining concessions in the jade fields of northern Myanmar's Kachin state, where the Christian Kachin Independence Army and the Buddhist Burmese military are engaged in a civil war. Despite the threat of deadly landslides, TIME magazine reports up to 300,000 unemployed migrants forage on unstable rubble piles looking to find a fortune among the less valuable stones companies dump.
The U.S. in 2016 sought to reward Myanmar for solving one problem, replacing military rule with the National League of Democracy party, by ending sanctions banning jade and ruby imports. But Myanmar's democratic reforms, moratorium on new mining licenses and freeze on renewal of existing mining licenses, safety standards, and anticorruption regulations have not closed mines operating without government certification; captured the tax money lost from jade smuggled to neighboring China; ended deaths from jade mining accidents; stopped the military from banning foreigners, except Chinese buyers, from reaching jade fields; financing the civil war with jade sales and taxes collected by Kachins from freelance miners on their lands; or stopping the heroin trafficking that thrives on sales to local migrants and a worldwide trade. Discuss: what can the U.S. or any country, including Myanmar, do to solve these problems?
Now, let's look at the challenges of placing grey wolves on the U.S. Endangered Species Act or delisting them and authorizing a grey wolf hunting season. Stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Peter and the Wolf have given wolves a bad reputation. But if you've ever tried to see wolves at a zoo, you know they don't come up to look at visitors. You have to really search hard to see them in the shadows of wooded areas.
How many wolves are too many? No humans have been harmed by the State of Wisconsin's estimated 900 wolves. Farmers in the state, who have sheep, goats, and cattle and live near waterways where wolves follow their wildlife prey, report no problems. They say wolves are smart and, if you have barking guard dogs that warn wolves are present, the wolves move on. Of Wisconsin's 70,000 farms, 47 reported a loss from wolves, and of the state's 3.5 million cattle, wolves were believed to have killed 75 animals. Wisconsin manages this situation by compensating farmers for livestock lost to wolves and by allowing landowners to get permits to kill wolves endangering their livestock.
Surveys show 65% of the people who live in what is considered wolf range and 80% outside wolf range consider wolves members of the ecological community that have a right to exist. If wolves are delisted from the U.S. Endangered Species Act and a hunt is authorized, the State does not disclose maps showing where wolf packs are located.Your thoughts?
Since those who do things like smuggle slaves in cargo containers and poach rhinoceros horns at night, like it or not young people need to learn to be suspicious and vigilant, to look for abuses, and to ask authorities to undertake the often dangerous security measures needed to regulate or stop these activities. The challenges presented by lumber/wood harvesting, diamond and gold mining in Africa, and the trade in elephant ivory and exotic birds were discussed in earlier posts. Here, let's look at what is involved in regulating the mining of and trade in jade and in protecting an endangered species: the gray wolf.
In Myanmar (formerly knows as Burma), earning a living by finding and selling jade gems shares the same drawbacks as searching for diamonds and gold in Africa. Big Chinese companies connected with the Burmese military hold mining concessions in the jade fields of northern Myanmar's Kachin state, where the Christian Kachin Independence Army and the Buddhist Burmese military are engaged in a civil war. Despite the threat of deadly landslides, TIME magazine reports up to 300,000 unemployed migrants forage on unstable rubble piles looking to find a fortune among the less valuable stones companies dump.
The U.S. in 2016 sought to reward Myanmar for solving one problem, replacing military rule with the National League of Democracy party, by ending sanctions banning jade and ruby imports. But Myanmar's democratic reforms, moratorium on new mining licenses and freeze on renewal of existing mining licenses, safety standards, and anticorruption regulations have not closed mines operating without government certification; captured the tax money lost from jade smuggled to neighboring China; ended deaths from jade mining accidents; stopped the military from banning foreigners, except Chinese buyers, from reaching jade fields; financing the civil war with jade sales and taxes collected by Kachins from freelance miners on their lands; or stopping the heroin trafficking that thrives on sales to local migrants and a worldwide trade. Discuss: what can the U.S. or any country, including Myanmar, do to solve these problems?
Now, let's look at the challenges of placing grey wolves on the U.S. Endangered Species Act or delisting them and authorizing a grey wolf hunting season. Stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Peter and the Wolf have given wolves a bad reputation. But if you've ever tried to see wolves at a zoo, you know they don't come up to look at visitors. You have to really search hard to see them in the shadows of wooded areas.
How many wolves are too many? No humans have been harmed by the State of Wisconsin's estimated 900 wolves. Farmers in the state, who have sheep, goats, and cattle and live near waterways where wolves follow their wildlife prey, report no problems. They say wolves are smart and, if you have barking guard dogs that warn wolves are present, the wolves move on. Of Wisconsin's 70,000 farms, 47 reported a loss from wolves, and of the state's 3.5 million cattle, wolves were believed to have killed 75 animals. Wisconsin manages this situation by compensating farmers for livestock lost to wolves and by allowing landowners to get permits to kill wolves endangering their livestock.
Surveys show 65% of the people who live in what is considered wolf range and 80% outside wolf range consider wolves members of the ecological community that have a right to exist. If wolves are delisted from the U.S. Endangered Species Act and a hunt is authorized, the State does not disclose maps showing where wolf packs are located.Your thoughts?
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Commodity Crush Careers
Commodity traders keep an eye on prices like the following every day.
Per day prices
____________________________________________________________________
Commodities 1/18 1/24 1/31 2/1 2/3
____________________________________________________________________
Cotton 72.3 76.3
Corn 363.5
Coffee 149.5 152.2 149.6 146.8
Cocoa 2229 2202 2091 2063
Rough rice 9.94 9.98 9.54 9.53 9.51
Soybeans 33.83
Sugar 20.95 20.55 20.49 21.3
_______________________________________________________________________________
But commodity traders are not the only ones whose careers involve commodity prices. Whether we live in Toronto or Timbuktu, trading money for goods and bartering goods for goods are what we do all our lives. On the global level there are careers in shipping agricultural commodities that go into what we eat and the mineral commodities that go into what we use. Crude oil is the most traded commodity in the world and coffee is the second.
The prices buyers are willing to sign a contract to pay for commodities roll across the bottom of the CNBC station every trading day. You also can find commodity prices on the internet. I like to check them occasionally to see if there is an up trend or down trend, like the above prices show for cocoa, or up and down volatility.
What each quoted price means is complex. The price quoted for coffee beans applies to 37,500 pounds and the price for sugar applies to 112,000 pounds. These are the amounts that fit in one overseas shipping container. Since a ship might carry 18,000 containers, you can figure how much a company would pay for one shipload of a given amount of pounds.
Commodity prices are also important to those who price consumer goods. In the case of coffee beans, there are the additional costs of roasting the beans, repackaging the 250 bags that carry 37,5000 pounds of coffee on ships into the smaller bags or cans a consumer wants, distributing the coffee to thousands of stores, and advertising a brand.
How to increase prices
When a crop is harvested in countries that produce agricultural commodities, such as coffee, farmers will be offered lower prices if a harvest is large and marketed at one time. If a harvest is smaller because of drought or disease or because it is stored and sold gradually, prices will increase. Countries also can increase coffee export revenue, if they develop roasting facilities. Consequently, there are potential careers in water and pest control, storage, and processing. Some of these same subjects are covered in the earlier posts, "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and "Become a Discriminating Chocolate Consumer.")
I
Worldwide booms and recessions are a matter of concern to those whose careers in companies and countries depend on demand for the mineral commodities used in industrial production. Politicians in mineral-rich countries are tempted to take out loans in good times that voters will not want to repay with higher taxes in bad economic times. (The earlier post, "Falling Commodity Prices Spur Diversification in Emerging Markets," lists some of the counties affected by demand for certain mineral commodities.)
Commodities offer a vast field of career opportunities now and probably even more in the future as AI, robotics, and sensors are incorporated. For those interested in investing, the site, investopedia.com, covers the basics and more.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Diamond Flaws
President Obama will visit one kind of diamond, when he takes in a baseball game in Cuba this week.* And June brides have a many-faceted diamond on their ring fingers. For the independent miners paying the violent armed groups who control access to the rivers in the Central African Republic (CAR), the diamonds they find represent a treacherous way to scrape out a living.
These miners are far removed from those who wear the diamonds and gold found in the CAR, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Angola, and Mexico and the precious stones from Afghanistan and Myanmar (Burma) and from those who rely on the mobile phones, cars, computers, and other products that contain tungsten from Colombia and tantalum, tungsten, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before these raw materials become part of finished products, they change hands often in secretive and poorly regulated supply chains that span the globe.
The UN, OECD, US, and EU all are taking measures to pressure companies to ask their mineral suppliers more questions and to notice warning signs. Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO), knew Togo produced little or no gold, yet Swiss companies thought they were buying gold that originated there. Instead, their gold was coming from Burkina Faso. True to its advertising, De Beers is assuring consumers "a diamond is forever" by launching a pilot program to buy diamond jewelry and loose diamonds for resale, thereby reducing the need to buy new diamonds from unknown sources.
Not only is there growing concern about the human rights abuses associated with the dangers independent miners face, but conflict in the world's poorest countries relies in part on financing from selling licenses to miners, collecting tolls on transportation routes to the mines, taxes, and mineral sales. In Zimbabwe, even the national security forces and secret police supplement their government budgets and escape government oversight by engaging in the mineral trade.
There are money and jobs enough in the mineral trade for both miners and manufacturers to benefit by behaving responsibly.
*See the earlier post, "Good News from Cuba," for background on President Obama's trip to Cuba.
These miners are far removed from those who wear the diamonds and gold found in the CAR, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Angola, and Mexico and the precious stones from Afghanistan and Myanmar (Burma) and from those who rely on the mobile phones, cars, computers, and other products that contain tungsten from Colombia and tantalum, tungsten, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before these raw materials become part of finished products, they change hands often in secretive and poorly regulated supply chains that span the globe.
The UN, OECD, US, and EU all are taking measures to pressure companies to ask their mineral suppliers more questions and to notice warning signs. Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO), knew Togo produced little or no gold, yet Swiss companies thought they were buying gold that originated there. Instead, their gold was coming from Burkina Faso. True to its advertising, De Beers is assuring consumers "a diamond is forever" by launching a pilot program to buy diamond jewelry and loose diamonds for resale, thereby reducing the need to buy new diamonds from unknown sources.
Not only is there growing concern about the human rights abuses associated with the dangers independent miners face, but conflict in the world's poorest countries relies in part on financing from selling licenses to miners, collecting tolls on transportation routes to the mines, taxes, and mineral sales. In Zimbabwe, even the national security forces and secret police supplement their government budgets and escape government oversight by engaging in the mineral trade.
There are money and jobs enough in the mineral trade for both miners and manufacturers to benefit by behaving responsibly.
*See the earlier post, "Good News from Cuba," for background on President Obama's trip to Cuba.
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