One of the first acts of post-
colonial government of the newly independent Angola, led by the
People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) based in Luanda, was to
nationalize the assets of the largely foreign investor-owned
Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang), under the philosophy that the diamonds of the ground were the property of all Angolans. ENDIAMA was created as a state-run company to manage diamond mining in Angola in 1981. Diamang was then formally disbanded in 1988. The biggest obstacle to operations by the newly minted ENDIAMA was the fact that Angola was embroiled in the
Angolan Civil War, and rebel groups such as the
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) held much of Angola's valuable mining areas, such as the
Kwango River basin, from which they mined diamonds to
barter for weapons and military equipment. During this chaotic time,
illegal diamond mining is estimated to have been almost four times the quantity produced legally, and UNITA controlled or operated in up to 70% of the country's land area at points before the eventual end of the war in 2002. ENDIAMA produced 8.55 million
carats of diamonds in 2010 and 8.75 million in 2022, following disruptions from the global
COVID-19 pandemic and
sanctions against its Russian business partner,
Alrosa, resulting from
the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the company expects to produce 14.5 million carats in 2024 with an eventual goal of 20 million by 2027. In 2023,
Diamantino Azevedo,
Minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas, announced that as part of the reform plan of
President João Lourenço, ENDIAMA and oil-giant
Sonangol would potentially both seek
dual listings on local and foreign
stock markets, starting with "maybe with five or ten percent" with an eventual goal of 30% private ownership. ENDIAMA had a revenue equaling 1.3 billion
euro that year. ==Operations==