Dorothée Gizenga, who served as executive director of the industry-NGO joint effort Diamond Development Initiative from 2008 until 2019, died on Feb. 18 of complications arising from diabetes. She was 60.
As head of DDI—which became part of Resolve in 2020—Gizenga was known as a tireless advocate on behalf of the world’s 1.5 million artisanal diamond miners, most of whom live in poverty.
“The idea is to not only improve the conditions under which these diamonds are found, but to better use those diamonds for the country’s benefit,” she told JCK shortly after taking the position. “This isn’t like those ads you see on TV, which ask you to give a child rice to make it through the month. This is about transforming a way of doing things so desperately poor countries can have a brighter future.”
DDI founder Ian Smillie, who also worked with Gizenga at Partnership Africa Canada, says “she had a very big heart and a tremendous work ethic. She could speak to anyone, from the people at the highest levels of African governments to people in the diamond industry to people in the fields. She was a popular figure at JCK shows.”
She even got a GIA degree to learn more about diamonds.
“She really wanted to understand the subject,” Smillie says.
Dorothee’s father, Antoine Gizenga, was a prominent politician in the independence movement of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While serving as deputy prime minister, Antoine was jailed following the assassination of prime minister Patrice Lumumba, and he and his family were forced into exile in 1965. The Gizengas moved to France, then Russia, then Angola. Antoine later served as DRC’s prime minister from 2006 to 2008.
Dorothée eventually moved to Canada, where she earned degrees in chemistry and economics.
As a young mother in Ottawa, she worked with Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs.
In 2003, she became a program manager of Partnership Africa Canada (now Impact), where she became involved in the fight against conflict diamonds. In 2008, she shifted to development diamonds, and was appointed the first executive director of the Diamond Development Initiative.
In that role, she helped develop the Maendeleo Diamond Standards, conditions that spell out best practices for artisanal diamond mining.
“The best way to support change is to first know that change is possible,” she told JCK in 2018. “In the past, many believed that this is a hopeless situation, as people have been mining this way for over 100 years. We are proving it is not impossible. It’s not hopeless. It is very hopeful, when the right investments are made.”
Industry consultant Peggy Jo Donahue says that Gizenga taught her the meaning of the word empowerment.
“Our efforts in the ‘rich’ developed jewelry industry to ‘help’ miners should not solely involve charitable donations, she once tartly reminded a young, idealistic diamond mining executive…who was building a school near his mine,” Donahue recalled on Facebook.
She remembered Gizenga asking the man: “What will happen if you go out of business?… What are you teaching those miners in terms of how to run their own operations responsibly, if you or your managers disappear? In other words, are you empowering these people—or are you keeping them dependent on you?”
Gizenga stepped down as DDI’s executive director in 2019, to become its regional director, based out of the DRC. She later re-engaged with DRC politics, becoming an official in the Unified Lumumbist Party.
“She hoped she could bring stability and honesty to politics in the Congo,” Smillie says.
Gizenga was also a cofounder of the Canadian and African Business Women’s Alliance and helped to establish the African Canadian Social Development Council. She was also a board member of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
She is survived by her son, André, and a large extended family. No other information on survivors was available at press time.
(Image courtesy of the Diamond Development Initiative)
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