Dos Santos, 79, has been receiving medical treatment since 2019. He was president of Angola between 1979 and 2017.

Russia has thwarted a Western effort to have its crude diamonds labeled as “conflict diamonds”—thwarted it so effectively that the Russia-Ukraine war won’t even be discussed at a crucial meeting of diamond producers this week.

The phrase “conflict diamonds” refers to those that finance “violence by rebel movements and their allies seeking to undermine legitimate governments,” a definition outlined in its charter by the Kimberley Process, a global watchdog forum set up in 2003 to block the sales of conflict diamonds. The Kimberley Process includes 85 countries, as well as industry and civil-society bodies, and the specificity of its definition has felt problematic and arbitrary in the past. Diamonds mined by insurgent groups in Angola? Conflict diamonds. Diamonds mined by Zimbabwe, after the army seized a mine and killed 200 miners? Not conflict diamonds.

Ahead of the Process’ meeting in Botswana this week, several member countries—Ukraine, the EU, the US, the UK, Australia and Canada—suggested expanding the ambit of “conflict diamonds” to include violent state actors as well. The proposal was aimed at Russia, which is the world’s largest producer of diamonds by volume, turning out nearly a third of all uncut diamonds. Alrosa, which digs diamonds out of Russian land adjoining the Arctic Ocean as well as out of African deposits, is the biggest diamond mining company in the world. Roughly a third of Alrosa is owned by the Russian government, and another third by the Russian republic of Yakutia.

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Economic strife, insecurity, corruption, political intolerance, unreliable internet, and poor education systems are behind the desire of many African youth to relocate to Europe or the US.

To be exact, more than half of African youth aged between 18 and 24 are likely to consider emigrating in the next three years if their governments do nothing to improve the quality of their lives. This is according to the 2022 Africa Youth Survey (pdf) report by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation (IFF), released recently in celebration of the World Refugee Day on June 20.

The study shows that on average, 52% of Africa’s youth population want to emigrate but in Nigeria and Sudan, it’s three quarters of the population while in Angola and Malawi it’s two thirds. Compared to the 2019 study (pdf) there is a 22% increase in the number of youth saying they would like to move to another country. Africa’s average age is 19 years.

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