Angola’s Minerals Minister Diamantino Azevedo is optimistic about his country’s diamond future: According to a quote he made by Vera Angola, cited by Rough & Polished, Angola – currently the world’s fourth largest rough diamond producer – has the “potential to become the world’s second-largest rough diamond producer by 2030.”
Azevedo said that Angola was the only country in the world in the past decade “where diamond production had been growing due to the discoveries of new deposits.” The Luaxe deposit, discovered by Alrosa and Catoca in 2013, is expected to yield about 5.7 million carats in 2023 – more than half of what Angola produced in 2020.
In 2020, the South African country produced approximately 8 million carats in 2020. In the first 10 months of 2021, it produced 6.5 million carats of rough.
