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The role of infrastructure in economic development
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Countries in Africa rely heavily on their exportation of diamonds along with oil for income. The revenue from the exportation of rough diamonds has either helped countries develop or lead to catastrophic events. The economic comparison of countries that sell rough diamonds can vary greatly. Some African countries strive for economic independence where as others have faced years of conflict and poverty. The economic and political oversight of rough diamonds compared differently throughout countries in Africa. Two countries that are plentiful in rough diamond resources are Botswana and Angola. These two countries took two different economic paths. Botswana embraced a democratic government and escaped civil war while Angola has suffered years of civil war. Despite the fact that both countries sell the same resource, they faced different economic futures.
In 1967, Botswana became an independent democratic country from Britain. Most of Botswana's revenue at that time came from the agricultural industry. The government of Botswana was approached by a corporation called DeBeers in the early 1970's. DeBeers is a large corporation that oversees the production of rough diamond mines. DeBeers offered Botswana a 50/50 “share ownership in all of the country's diamond mines” (Taylor and Mokhawa 263). Botswana was one of few countries in Africa that saw the potential for economic growth by having a joint venture with DeBeers. When DeBeers and Botswana formed their first partnership, it became a new company called Debswana. The first major exploration discovery of the joint partnership was in a city called Boteti. This is an area rich in rough diamonds and is now called the Orapa field. The diamond mine located here is home to the
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...sumption, creates emission of greenhouse gases and other harmful chemical materials. Once released into the air, it can cause environmental problems, which in turn threatens not only the environment, but also the health of the people who live in it. In order to reduce the use of energy to help protect our planet and our health, the diamond mining industry has implemented renewable energy programs to monitor energy and carbon emission. Since its beginning, mining company PHP Billiton program has saved an equivalent of one million liters of diesel fuel per year at their Ekati Diamond Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The health of the environment and the health of humanity are as one. Whatever we do to our planet, we do to ourselves. Reducing energy consumption of diamond mining not only helps protect our planet, but also helps protect the health of our people.
Analysis Introduction This project belongs in the engineering-efficiency category; therefore, it has to fit at least 3 of 4 performance hurdles, which are 1. Impact on EPS; 2.Payback; 3.Discounted cash flow and 4. Internal rate of return. In this article, some of those involved explained and described their opinions; however, professional knowledge may have been lacking.
Priscilla. “The World Economy and Africa.” JSpivey – Home – Wikispaces. 2010. 29 January 2010. .
About status within your peer group. Even people on low monthly salaries would buy a high quality diamond: it was a family driven purchase.
Some of the highest producing diamond mines are countries in Africa. Countries that had some of the highest rate of conflict were Angola, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The ...
Said to be a girl's best friend, diamonds are often seen as a symbol of poverty, war, and death for many Africans. Due to the cruel and inhuman manner by which these diamonds are mined and process, the trade of these illicit gems must be stopped. Conflict diamonds or blood diamonds are often associated with war, forced labor, child labor, and smuggling. Paul Orogun wrote an article for in the journal, World Affairs, where he describes some of the brutal conflicts in recent African history. “Blood Diamonds and Africa's Armed Conflicts in the Post—Cold War Era”, in which he talks about the conflicts associated with the illegal diamond trade. Orogun de...
This relates back to Congo, where violence spurred by ethnic rivalries is due to local groups’ desire to make money by getting into the extractive industries. In another example, Newmont, an American company, mines Ghanaian gold and pays the government part of the profits. Here, Burgis shined the spotlight on an environmental issue: the sodium cyanide spill in Kwamebourkrom that killed aquatic life and posed hazardous living conditions for locals (Burgis, 134). Finally, in the last few chapters, Burgis touched on Cecil John Rhodes’ legacy as the founder of De Beers, blood diamonds, imperialism, and violence carried out by local governments and mining companies in order to protect their interests.
The movie shows different villages in different scenarios, with rich natural colors like brown, green, red etc. The cities are portrayed as hectic and intimidating, dirty and poor. After watching the movie “Blood Diamond” Directed by Edward Zwick I realized that the main issue or problem in the movie was the blood diamonds. There are much more issues and problems in the movie but I believe this is the most important because the whole movie revolves around the blood diamonds. Blood diamonds were used in this movie and were the main focus of the movie. The reason for blood diamonds being the main economic issue or problem is because of the blood diamonds people were forced to work as slaves to find diamonds in the water so they can be used to buy guns. Blood diamonds were the cause of all of these terrible acts, people dying to search for these diamonds so they can be sold. Also the other issues of blood diamonds were that a big company was buying a lot of these conflict diamonds from Africa for really cheap, the company was Van Da Kaap. It would buy an abundance of these diamonds and store them so the diamonds they acquire seem rare and so they can stay at a high price. The economic issue with this was that the company Van Da Kaap would not tell anyone of these abundance of diamonds because than if they did tell anyone, the prices of the diamonds would fall and this is called supply and
In “ “Blood Diamonds” and Africa’s Armed Conflicts in the Post – Cold War Era, “ Orogun (2004) said that diamonds are referring as “clean stones”. This article explains about the black market is really happening in African. I am using this article to support how the black market of diamond trades is still not regulated, and they defined it as “licit” trade.
[5] Diamond Industry Annual Review, De Beers Signs New Angolan Agreement, [internet] Accessed on: 13th November 2005, http://www.pacweb.org/e/images/stories/documents/addendum%20angola%202005-english.pdf
...l the flow of conflict diamonds. Both assure consumers that more than 99% of rough stones today come from conflict-free sources which are regulated by the Kimberley process. According to the people who profited from diamonds, the blood diamonds problem is passé5. Further research tells us that it is not. According to Father Rocco Puopolo of the Africa Faith and Justice Network, he says “It’s not passé,” “the diamond industry can claim what they want and the film will always serve as a template for what is going on in Africa today.” This point out that labour exploitation and conflict (for control of precious resources such as gold) may still be going on in Africa.
The question to be answered in this paper is to what extent has the resource curse affected the Nigerian economy and government? Resource curse is a term that states the observation that countries that have a plethora of natural resources (e.g. oil, coal, diamonds etc.). usually have unstable political and economic structures (Sachs, 827). Nigeria is categorized as a nation that has succumbed to the resource curse as it has an abundance of, and an overdependence on, oil, and a decreasing gross domestic product (GDP) (Samuels, 321-322). Nigeria is known for its specialization and overdependence on oil and according to Ross, nations of such nature tend to have high levels of poverty, large class gaps, weak educational systems, more corruption within the government, and are less likely to become democracies (Ross, 356).
The African continent is rich with natural and intellectual resources. Northern Africa has rich oil deposits that, once discovered, have made billions of dollars. Sub-Sahara Africa is rich with deposits of precious minerals such as gold and diamonds. Throughout much of history Africa has been thought of as a rich land. But the Africa we know today as being plagued by famine, poverty and war came about at a much later date.
One morning, a well-known gentleman went into a bank in London, and was received immediately by Mr. Alexander Holder, head of the bank. He asked for a loan of fifty thousand Pounds. Mr. Holder asked him to present collateral to cover that large sum of money; the man showed him a crown that belongs to the country. Knowing the risk, Mr. Holder agreed to lend the gentleman that large sum of money if he pays it back in a few days. After the gentleman left Mr. Holder decided to keep the crown all the time near by him, so he took the crown to his home in Streatham. There he lived with his only son Arthur and his niece Mary who was an orphan. He told them about his story with the crown of diamonds. When the father was going to sleep, Arthur asked for two hundred pounds. He refused to give him thinking his son was spoiled by his rich friends who had nothing to do except watch horses. Before going to sleep, he went to check that all windows and doors were locked. He saw Mary at a side window at the hall. She closed it quickly, and Holder noticed that she looked anxious. After he went to sleep, he heard some noise that woke him up; he waited until he heard it again coming from his sitting room. He jumped out of his bed and saw his son holding the crown broken from the side and three diamonds were missing. In grief, he accused Arthur of being a thief and a liar. Meanwhile Mary came in and seeing the crown fainted. Arthur asked if he could leave for five minutes but Holder refused and called the police to take his only beloved son to jail. The police searched the house but could not find anything and advised Holder to get the help of Mr. Holmes the famous detective.
Diamonds aren’t just a girls best friend, they are also one of the hardest minerals created on earth. Created naturally at extremely high temperatures between 900 and 1,300 degrees Celsius and pressures of 4.5 to 6 kilaPascals, so high that these can only be met deep within the earth’s mantle that change Carbon-containing minerals into diamonds over billions of years. The obsession of diamonds and the will to posses and pay for them in society is great. The only way that diamonds can reach the surface of the earth and be put to human use is with powerful volcanic eruptions or deep-earth mining. Volcanic eruptions are rather rare, because most of the pipes in the rock that go to the surface, releasing volcanic material don’t contain enough diamonds to be valuable, and some don’t contain any diamonds within them at all. However, diamonds can also be produced synthetically in a chamber that simulates the pressure and temperature found in the earth’s mantle. Here, they can create the same diamonds with a hardness equal to that nature can provide, and so close molecularly that only a gemologist with specific equipment can differentiate. In these synthetic labs, the diamonds created are usually a yellow color because nitrogen, a key element in the creation, has impurities that are emitted through the color. Therefore, many other colors may be emitted in the synthetics, depending on which elements were used in the creation. Diamonds are world renowned for their amazing physical toughness, beauty and lustrous, originating from their strong bonding. They are used in the industrial world as the as cutting tools because of this superior toughness, and no other earthly mineral has been found to exceed the diamond’s durability. Fuelin...