Martin Rapaport's lifelong passion for diamonds...[is] now devoted to fair trade diamonds... Even as he talks about helping the 1m artisanal miners in West Africa who live in utter poverty, he is not advocating charity or sentimental gestures but rather putting forward a rational business proposition... "We are creating a new fair trade category which will outsell all other diamonds..."... He is convinced that only the private sector, not governments and not even non-governmental organisations, can make a real difference in Africa. "Governments must create an enabling environment for business and then get the hell out of the way," he says. "Economic power is the one power that works..." Mr Rapaport has set up a pilot project involving five diggers' co-operatives in Sierra Leone where best practice is followed but which, he says, are not yet sustainable... But he is the first to admit that implementation is a challenge.