The Diamond Development Initiative (DDI) recently announced the appointment of Ian Rowe as its new Executive Director, with effect from September 2, 2019.

“His appointment follows the impending departure of Dorothée Gizenga, who as DDI's founding ED has provided leadership and inspiration for more than a decade, and who will now take on a new role as Regional Director to lead DDI's expansion in Africa,” DDI said. Gizenga will be based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 

Rowe has been DDI's Deputy ED since September 2018. He has two decades of experience in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, where he worked with civil society organisations and United Nations agencies in the areas of development, socio-economic recovery and conflict prevention.

Rowe has also held senior UN management positions in the DRC and Haiti, and has worked in a variety of staff and consulting positions in Kenya, Somalia, Burundi and Bolivia. In 2008 he served on a UN Panel of Experts on the Sudan, investigating violations of the arms embargo on Darfur. Prior to joining DDI, he served as Director of the Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Reintegration and Resettlement Division within the UN Stabilisation Mission in Congo (MONUSCO). He was responsible for managing 14 regional offices in support of the government-led disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process. 

“As Deputy Executive Director of DDI, he has managed our field operations in Sierra Leone and has led a six-month strategic planning process to position DDI for a future in which artisanal mining is expected to become a much more prominent development challenge,” DDI outlined. “As a result, DDI is now poised to consolidate many of the important lessons it has learned into larger, cross-cutting programmes with positive outcomes for the artisanal mining sector.”

"Artisanal miners are at the wellhead of the diamond pipeline," commented Rowe. "Bringing them into the formal diamond economy benefits them, their communities and the industry as a whole. Scaling up what we have learned about the process is the task ahead."

Rowe holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University in French and Spanish, and a Master's degree in international conflict analysis from the University of Kent.