Africa's diamond capital — a city of two million built on alluvial gems that almost no outsider ever visits
Mbuji-Mayi is the capital of Kasai-Oriental province in central DRC — one of the most diamond-rich cities in the world. The surrounding Kasai region produces an estimated 50-70% of the DRC's industrial diamond output. Despite a population of over 2 million people (roughly as large as Brussels), Mbuji-Mayi is almost entirely absent from international travel coverage. The city exists almost entirely in service of the diamond economy — artisanal and small-scale miners, MIBA (the state diamond company), and trading networks extending to Antwerp.
The Kasai diamond deposits were identified by Belgian geologists early in the colonial period, and FORMINIÈRE (Société Internationale Forestière et Minière du Congo) began industrial extraction in the 1920s. After independence, the Belgian company was replaced by the state enterprise MIBA (Minière de Bakwanga). Under Mobutu, the Kasai diamonds funded the state and the president's inner circle. The city grew explosively from the 1950s onward as diamond money and population drawn to the mining economy doubled and redoubled it — one of the fastest urbanising places in 20th-century Africa on the…