Gemstones from Africa

The traditional sources for colored gemstones are in Asia and South America, especially Burma, Sri Lanka and Brazil. However, these days Africa is generating most of the the excitement in the gemstone world. Looking at our own inventory of over 35,000 gems, about 50% of them originate from Africa.

Our business is based in Chanthaburi, Thailand, one of the world centers for cutting and trading colored gemstones. Not surprisingly, Chanthaburi has a significant foreign population. But the foreign population is largely African, not Western, since so many African gem traders are active here.

Everyone knows Africa as the source for diamonds, but its colored gemstone business is becoming increasingly important, even though colored gem production is spread across small mines in more than half a dozen countries. The main gemstone producing countries are in Southern and Eastern Africa, stretching from Namibia in the southwest through Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania, to Kenya in Eastern Africa. Madagascar, the large island off the coast of Mozambique, is part of this same mineral-rich area, known as the Neoproterozoic Mozambique Belt.

Colored gemstone production from the African mines is constantly changing and smart buyers have learned to exploit any opportunities, since gems that are plentiful one year may become scarce the next year. This happened with the fine spessartite garnet from Namibia, for example. While there is still some supply from Namibia, it is difficult to find and most of the better spessartite now comes from Mozambique.

Spessartite Garnet Gems from Namibia

The most important producers recently have been Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar. Madagascar is famous for recent discoveries of ruby and sapphire, though a number of other gemstones have also been found, including tourmaline, aquamarine, chrysoberyl, andalusite, apatite, citrine, iolite and kyanite. Tanzania has enormous potential and gemstone mining there already employs more than a half a million small-scale miners throughout the country. Tanzania is especially famous for tanzanite, but also produces very fine Tanzanian spinel in large sizes, marvelous rhodolite, tsavorite garnet and some uniquely colored unheated zircon.

Mozambique is producing excellent tourmaline in a wide range of colors, and we have also bought fine spessartite and red garnet gemstones in impressive sizes. Mozambique has recently become famous for its high quality ruby and Paraiba tourmaline. In fact, most of the world's supply of Paraiba now comes from Mozambique since the Brazilian supply is so limited.

Nigeria, the large western African nation, is the one important gemstone producer that is not in the Mozambique Belt. Nigeria has produced respectable blue sapphire as well as large quantities of fine tourmaline. Nigeria is also known for pyrope and almandine garnet, aquamarine and topaz.

Green Tourmaline from Nigeria

Given the state of development in most of the producing countries, we expect African gemstone production to increase in the coming years. But the supply from most of these mines is very limited, and in our experience one has to be an opportunistic buyer when supply is plentiful.