Diamond mission in Sierra Leone renews retailer's natural diamond focus

Doug Meadows came home from Sierra Leone with a more pointed way to sell natural diamonds. The cofounder of David Douglas Diamonds & Jewelry in Marietta, Georgia, said seeing artisanal mining in Kono District sharpened the story he tells customers who compare natural stones with lab-grown diamonds, moissanite and CZ solitaires.

Meadows had already built an in-store lab-grown diamond challenge around four about 1.5-carat solitaires, but the trip gave that comparison more weight. In March, he joined the Peace Diamond Trade Mission to Sierra Leone, led by Ezi Rapaport and hosted by Empower Africa, after missing an earlier fall trip. The itinerary split the delegation between three days in Kono District and two in Freetown, with an all-inclusive fee of $3,500 for the core mission. Meadows said he was the only brick-and-mortar retailer in the group, which also included a diamond cutter from Phoenix, Tracey Ellison, known as @thediamondsgirl, Big Manny 1 from London, and a London-based social storyteller focused on natural diamonds. He said the BBC and an embassy representative focused on economic development also showed up while the group was in the field.

What Meadows saw in Kono was a diamond economy still stitched into daily life. He noticed partially built homes and later learned that locals often expanded them only after miners found diamonds and had the money to continue construction. The mission’s promotional arc centered on the nearby Peace Diamond, a 709-carat rough stone found in Sierra Leone in 2017 and later sold for $6.5 million. The mission materials said diamond revenues can support healthcare, education, agriculture and land reclamation, a pitch that tries to recast the country’s diamond history in terms of development rather than extraction alone.

That framing lands in a market where lab-grown diamonds have changed the engagement-ring conversation. CNBC cited 2024 survey data showing that 52% of couples said their engagement ring featured a lab-grown diamond, a number that underscores the pricing pressure Meadows is navigating even as he continues to sell lab-grown stones. But Sierra Leone still gives natural diamonds a different kind of argument: federal trade guidance says mining accounted for more than 70% of export earnings, 5.2% of government revenue and 3.5% of employment in 2024, while the sector is governed in part by the 2022 Mines and Mineral Development Act and the 2022 Environment Protection Act, and the country adheres to the Kimberley Process and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. For Meadows, that combination of documented origin, scarcity and a place-based story is what still separates a natural diamond from a substitute.