The DRC's agreement with Swiss company Adex Platform AG — formalised through the Adex RDC SA joint venture approved by the Council of Ministers on May 29, 2026 — targets the processing value chain that the country currently exports raw. With approximately 8.9 million carats of annual diamond production, the DRC is a globally significant rough diamond supplier whose value-added processing — cutting, polishing, and certification — occurs almost entirely outside its borders.
The 50-50 FOMIN-Adex Platform AG structure is the DRC's first formal commitment to domestic diamond processing at this institutional level.
The CEEC's estimate of more than 50 years of sector viability provides the investment horizon. The projected 30 to 40 direct jobs and 120 to 150 indirect positions are modest for an initial phase but establish the domestic skills and infrastructure baseline from which scaling becomes possible.
The extension of the agreement's scope to coloured gemstones broadens the DRC's addressable market.
The country hosts significant non-diamond precious mineral resources — tourmaline, malachite, and other coloured gemstones — that share the same structural challenge as diamonds: raw material leaves, processing value stays abroad. Whether the ADEX agreement's coloured gemstone dimension translates into specific operational programmes, or remains an aspirational scope extension, depends on the implementation detail that has not yet been publicly disclosed.
