Encouraging Transparency: Diamond Area Community Development Fund

The Diamond Area Community Development Fund (DACDF) provides incentive for diamond miners and resource-rich chiefdoms to engage in legal diamond mining and revenue reporting by distributing a percentage of mining revenue back to the producing chiefdoms. SFCG chairs the DACDF sensitisation committee.

The Government of Sierra Leone developed the DACDF to foster increased diamond export revenue and to provide community development funds to the chiefdoms mining the diamonds, which were ravaged during the ten-year civil war. The DACDF sensitisation committee took responsibility for ensuring that communities knew about the fund's existence. With its multi-media production capacity and staff of journalists, SFCG tackled the public information component of the DACDF.

As the implementation of the DACDF progressed, the committee also strived to foster transparency in the process. Under the DACDF mechanism, each chiefdom was required to publicly announce how the funds would be used. SFCG publicized this information so that the community residents could supervise the use of the monies, making sure the funds were used for their stated purpose.

In January 2003, SFCG teamed up with the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development for a two-week tour of fifteen chiefdoms that had received payments from the DACDF. Overall, they found mixed results. In some communities, despite large grants, work had not yet started on the stated project. In other chiefdoms, some work was progressing apace, with construction underway. These communities, however, felt that the full amount of the money was not being devoted to these projects and had concerns about the management of the funds. Some incredible work had also been achieved. Lower Bambara Chiefdom in Kenema District provided an exemplary project. With the DACDF, the residents had constructed a multi-purpose building replete with a court, dining hall, furnished conference room, and self-contained toilets.

Lower Bambara provides proof as to what this innovative mechanism can accomplish when implemented correctly and honestly.

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