Garimpeiroworlds: digging, dying & ‘hunting’ for diamonds in Angola

This article offers a brief presentation of the diamond smuggling activities between the Angolan province of Lunda Norte and the bordering Congolese Kasai and (especially) Kwango region (and more particularly the administrative units of Kahemba and Kasongo Lunda. Over the past two decades these areas have become central in contributing to the ‘dollarisation’ of local economies in both Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo. As a result, national currencies in the two countries lost much of their significance throughout the 1990s. Whereas the major cities in Congo and Angola have in many respects become ‘village’ or ‘forest‐like’, the ‘bush’ on the border between Congo and Lunda Norte is the place where dollars have been generated, and where villages have transformed themselves, at least temporarily, into booming diamond settlements.