Ironically enough, Diamond Drew got his beginning as a worldwide traveler, diamond expert and importer working as a gold and platinum mining laborer in Nevada in the 1980s. It was while working in this Nevada mine that he was introduced to a family from Sierra Leone, West Africa, who befriended Drew and told him stories about the large amounts of untapped gold reserves in the country. In 1990, Drew travelled to Sierra Leone searching for his own fortune in gold mining, and was quickly captivated by the burgeoning diamond mining industry emerging in the small nation. From that moment forward, he knew he had found his calling; like so many before him, diamonds had captured his fascination and his heart. Safari Diamond was born.

Drew decided to move to the country, living in a rural area amongst the natives and learning the ins and outs of diamond trading. He began buying rough diamond from local miners and selling it in the wholesale market. Within a year, he worked through the myriad of bureauocracy and political red tape in order to purchase land and open his own mining and export operations near the small town of Bo, Sierra Leone. To date, Drew remains one of the only Americans with mining operation rights in the country of Sierra Leone, which exports approximately $130 million USD of rough diamonds annually.

By 1994, the infamous and bloody civil war in Sierra Leone was gaining momentum and worldwide attention. Not wanting to be a party to the “blood” or “conflict diamond” trade and fearing for his own personal safety, Drew left the country and his mining operations there and moved to Guinea, West Africa, at the time a stable democracy free from the oppression running rampant elsewhere in the region. Here, Diamond Drew continued to mine and export diamonds, slowly expanding his operations and gaining education and experience in all areas of the industry over the next several years. To learn more about these countries and regions, visit our West Africa page.

Safari Diamond opened its office in Antwerp, Belgium in 1998, considered for over 200 years to be the world’s diamond trading hub of rough and polished stones alike. It is here in which the imported African rough diamonds are sorted, sold on the wholesale market or set aside to be cut into polished, finished stone and sold in the retail market.

In 2000, Safari Diamond opened its own manufacturing facility, in order to cut and polish its own mined rough diamond and manufacture custom jewelry. Drew learned the diamond cutting trade firsthand from master cutter Jim Blanck, who continues to run the Daytona Beach, FL area facility today.

By 2005, with the civil strife and rebel attacks long ended, Safari Diamond reopened its Sierra Leone mining facilities and continues to expand its operations there today. The company works closely with the native miners, their families, and local relief workers working in the country to provide much needed aid, food and medical support.

To this day, Diamond Drew personally inspects every diamond mined, bought and sold within his operations, and decides which pieces meet his stringent criteria to be shipped to Florida to his manufacturing facility and cut into the brilliant stones. Only those finished, polished diamonds and jewelry meeting GIA Certification standards and Drew’s color and clarity requirements are then shipped to his retail office in Orange County, California to be sold to his private client base or to his personal network of jewelers around the country.Safari Diamond is a major provider of its exclusive stones and jewelry to some of the oldest established and most respected diamond jewelers in the United States today.

Safari Diamond has grown from a small, local mining site to a worldwide enterprise which controls every aspect of its operations – from mining, importing and exporting, manufacturing and selling in both the wholesale and retail world markets. It is in this way in which the “middle men” are cut out, price is kept low, and you can rest assured knowing you have an authentic diamond rich in history and of only the highest quality. Safari Diamond is proud to be known and respected as an ethical and high quality provider of diamonds to the world today….from mine to market.