Angola’s State-owned national diamonds company, Empresa Nacional de Diamantes de Angola, better known by its acronym, Endiama, last week signed a joint development agreement with Russian diamond miner Alrosa. This covers prospecting and exploration in diamoniferous areas in the African country.

"In the past two years, we carried out geological studies in Angola and concluded that just 10% of the alluvial diamonds we examined were from known kimberlites,” said Endiama president Carlos Sumbula. Because of this, the Angolan company decided to start a second phase of studies and undertake prospecting across the national territory in order to to locate the majority of the kimberlite pipes that had not yet been discovered.

Also speaking at the joint development agreement signing ceremony, Alrosa president Fedor Andeev again referred to the geological studies that had been carried out and highlighted that they indicated that Angola’s diamond potential could be around a billion carats. The two companies will each have a 50% share in the joint programme, which will be developed over the next two years. It is not unusual for Endiama to have foreign partners in its operations. Endiama and Alrosa are already partners, along with Odebrecht, of Brazil, in the country’s biggest diamond mine, Catoca, which accounts for 87% of Angola’s diamond output.

Separately, at the international conference in Luanda marking the 100th anniversary of the first discovery of diamonds in Angola, the county’s Geology and Mines Minister, Francisco Queir�z, also affirmed that the country had an enormous diamondiferous potential that still had to be located and quantified. He reported that, of more than a thousand kimberlite pipes that had been identified, currently only three were being explored. One of these was the Catoca mine.

Back in March, Endiama announced that it was planning to open four new mines this year and early next year. Two of these would be alluvial mines and the other two kimberlite mines. The new mines would be in the provinces of Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul and Malanje. Two alluvial mines that had been closed following the 2008 Great Recession (and the associated fall in world diamond prices) would also be reopened. A third such operation had already been restarted.

Angola is Africa’s number two diamond producer in quantity, after Botswana, and is, in value terms, the world’s number five producer. Endiama has reported that Angolan diamond output last year came to 8.3-million carats, the same as in 2011. The Kimberley Process group estimated the country’s 2012 diamond production as being worth $1.16-billion. The company expects national production this year to be at the same level as in 2011 and 2012, although it could be higher.

Diamonds account for 5% of Angola’s gross domestic product (GDP) and are the country’s second-most-important export after oil. (Petroleum production and associated support activities are responsible for some 85% of the country’s GDP.) The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook 2013 estimated Angolan GDP last year as $130.4-billion in purchasing power parity terms and $118.7-billion in official exchange rate terms.