Bringing Zimbabwean gemstones to the global stage

Hamandishe Nhiwatiwa is a young entrepreneur with a passion for empowering his local communities through the sustainable trade of gemstones. Zimbabwe's ground yields sapphire, ruby, tourmaline, aquamarine and garnet of real quality — but too much of that value has historically left the country in its rawest form, with little of it staying where the stones were found.

Gemstones Zimbabwe was built to change that balance. Today that means sourcing, grading and exporting directly, and using cutters we have vetted when a buyer wants finished goods rather than rough. Bringing that cutting in-house, in Zimbabwe, is what the business is being built toward — and it is deliberately not being rushed. Sustainability here is practical rather than decorative: sourcing that the people involved can keep doing, and terms that hold up on both sides of a deal.

His training at the Harry Oppenheimer Diamond Training School and membership of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain mean stones are assessed in-house rather than taken on trust. Buyers deal with someone who can tell them what a stone actually is — and who will say so plainly when a stone is not what they are looking for.

He has also been invited to write white papers on coloured gemstone policy — work that runs alongside the trading rather than apart from it. How value is captured, what has to be disclosed, and how material moves legally across a border are live questions in both.