In 2003 the diamond industry established the Kimberley Process, an international certification system designed to reassure consumers that the diamonds they bought were conflict-free. It is an industry that was supposed to be cleaned up, after the turn-of-the-millennium notoriety surrounding so-called blood or conflict diamonds-precious stones mined in African war zones, often by forced labor, and used to fund armed rebel movements.

Mwanza and Rodriguez are on opposite ends of an $81.4 billion-a-year industry that links the mines of Africa, home to 65% of the world’s diamonds, with the sparkling salesrooms of high-end jewelry retailers around the world. “We do this work so we can find something that will let us eat,” says Mwanza. Many parents choose to send their teenagers to the mines instead. Teachers at government schools demand payment from students to supplement their meager salaries. Hundreds of miners die every year in tunnel collapses that are seldom reported because they happen so often. None of the roads are paved, not even the airport runway. Yet the provincial capital, Tshikapa, betrays nothing of the wealth that lies beneath the ground. Mwanza’s mine, a ruddy gash on the banks of a small stream whose waters will eventually reach the Congo River, is at the center of one of the world’s most important sources of gem-quality diamonds. He knows of at least a dozen other boys from his community who have been forced to work in the mines to survive. A large stone, maybe a carat, could earn him $100, he says, enough to let him dream about going back to school, after dropping out at 12 to go to the mines-the only work available in his small village. It’s been three months since Mwanza last found a diamond, and his debts-for food, for medicine for his father-are piling up. His father is blind his mother abandoned them several years ago. Mining work is grueling, and he is plagued by backaches, but that is nothing compared with the pain of seeing his family go hungry. To Mbuyi Mwanza, a 15-year-old who spends his days shoveling and sifting gravel in small artisanal mines in southwest Democratic Republic of Congo, diamonds symbolize something much more immediate: the opportunity to eat.

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