Williamson diamond mine
diamond mine in Tanzania
The Williamson Diamond Mine (also known as the Mwadui mine) is a diamond mine 23 kilometres (14 mi) northeast of Shinyanga in Tanzania; it became well known as the first significant diamond mine outside of South Africa. The kimberlite pipe was found in March 1940 and the mine established by John Williamson, a Canadian geologist, and has been continuous operation since then, making it one of the oldest continuously operating diamond mines in the world. Over its lifetime it has produced over 19 million carats (3,800 kg) of diamonds. A 2020 report by The Guardian said that high-quality pink diamonds from the mine could value up to $700,000 a carat.
The Williamson mine was once owned by its namesake Williamson and later nationalized by the government of Tanzania. Since February 2009 the mine is mostly owned by Petra Diamonds, with 75% ownership, the government of Tanzania owning the remaining 25%. In 2020, the mine came under scrutiny because of alleged human rights violations.
Description
The Williamson diamond mine is a large open pit mine currently about 90 meters (300 ft) deep. Diamond mining operations at the Williamson diamond mine are composed of four distinct activities: mining of the pit, re-treatment of tailings to recover missed diamonds, and gravel mining both on the property and adjacent to the property where gravel has been alluvially deposited. The open pit mining and tailings re-treatment are the largest of the four operations.
The public source identifies “Williamson diamond mine” as diamond mine in Tanzania. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Williamson, diamond and mine.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3314859. Authority coordinates are -3.517, 33.600. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 2020 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Williamson diamond mine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.