Despite a difficult year for the global diamond industry, GemFair scaled its programme. The expansion in member numbers also further increased GemFair’s diamond purchases, with the number of diamonds purchased increasing 68 per cent in 2024, following a 77 per cent increase in 2023. This growth is due in large part to our decision, at the request of local civil society organisations and in alignment with the principals of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains, to widen GemFair’s scope and become more inclusive to miners in earlier stages of their formalisation journey.
We also revised the GemFair Responsible ASM Assurance Programme. This revision started by benchmarking our standard and assurance programme materials against other responsible sourcing programmes, including the latest version of De Beers Group’s Best Practice Principles Assurance Programme, the OECD’s Environmental Due Diligence Guidance, the World Bank’s Forest-Smart Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining standards, among others.
After the benchmarking exercise, we went through each requirement of our standard to see where we needed to make changes and account for our new monitoring requirements, with a focus on ensuring the requirements reflect the context within which GemFair operates.
The revised ASM Standard and Manual will be available on our website in early 2025.
A recap on GemFair’s membership
Core Members
Any licensed artisanal and small-scale miner who meets GemFair’s Core Requirements and background checks, attends training on the GemFair ASM Standard and health and safety and logs all diamonds using the GemFair Toolkit at the mine site. Core Members are also eligible to receive access to finance from GemFair through our Forward Purchase Agreement (FPA) Programme.
Standard Members
Any licensed artisanal and small-scale miner who meets GemFair’s Core Requirements and background checks and chooses to sell their diamonds to GemFair. Diamonds purchased from Standard Members are logged in the GemFair App at GemFair’s buying office in Koidu, Sierra Leone.
All GemFair members receive a baseline mine site visit to assess their standards and working conditions. A sample of a minimum 25% of Core and Standard Members receive spot checks every year. Core Members receiving finance from GemFair receive a minimum of two spot check visits to their site per year.
What we’ve learned from piloting a more inclusive membership category
There are many stakeholders involved in an ASM site.
This pilot has given us the opportunity to learn more about individuals who have an interest in the mine site, raising our understanding of our suppliers; how they work; and how we can make our programme more attractive to them.
We have learned more about how mine site actors often work in a network with one another: One site might be connected to another by their supporter or mine manager or even have the same licence holder. We are exploring ways to map out these connections as well as encourage all miners to bring their "network" sites to join the GemFair Programme.
We support our Standard Members to convert to Core Membership by sensitising them to the advantages, such as being eligible to receive financing and receiving onsite training from our field team.
Next steps
Over the course of 2025, we will be rolling out our revised Responsible ASM Assurance Programme which includes both membership types, accounts for how we onboard and monitor the progress of members, It also introduces guidelines on sourcing from semi-mechanised mine sites as a supplement to our baseline standards.
Our management system
2024
443
6,645
200
8
433
1,062
174
2023
331
4,965
186
9
86
3,612
129
An accessible digital solution to enable traceability
GemFair’s digital solution is a set of hardware and software that helps GemFair maintain traceability of diamonds from the mine site through to export. Since we launched GemFair as a pilot in 2018, a bespoke digital solution to record diamond finds and offer traceability has been one of our core offerings. In designing this solution, we collaborated with miners and considered the following factors:
Online/offline function: Artisanal diamond miners in Kono often work outside the range of a cell phone tower. We therefore designed a diamond logging app that could record data offline and then upload that information once the user is in data range.
Solar power: We included a solar charger for the tablet in the toolkit to take account of the fact that much of the power grid is out of service, sometimes for days at a time.
Colour scheme: Most artisanal mining takes place in a very sunny environment, so the colours of the app needed to accommodate a strong glare. We found orange, white and black works best.
Over the years we have had to adapt our technology to the needs of our members, including:
Accounting for illiteracy and poor eyesight
Many of the licence holders we work with are older and did not go through the formal education system, nor have much exposure to smartphones or tablets. When we implement our GemFair Toolkit training, we ensure that the licence holder nominates a suitably experienced person to also attend the training to provide support over the longer term when the miner is logging diamonds into the GemFair app. We also provide ad hoc support to miners when we visit their mine site.
Providing a confidential record keeping system for diamond production
The miners in our programme appreciate being able to record their diamonds and profits in the GemFair app – this helps them determine whether it was a successful season. Only users authorised by GemFair and the licence holder can use the app, so their data is kept confidential.
Scale and hand loupe
We have received positive feedback about the other diamond categorisation tools in the toolkit, such as the scale and hand loupe. The scale is especially valuable for miners who end up selling their diamonds to another dealer. With a scale, the miner can be sure of the weight of the diamond and is therefore in a better negotiating position with any diamond dealer they approach subsequently.
We have learned that implementing traceability technology in an ASM context involves a significant amount of effort and tailoring to that unique setting. All of this is made possible by our dedicated team of field officers who provide training and ongoing support to our diamond suppliers and provide feedback to our product team to continuously improve our technology offering.
