27 Jun 2024

The entries for the De Beers Group Shining Light Awards (SLA) jewelry design competition for 2024 are open, from June 19 to August 16. 

A youth beneficiation skills development initiative by De Beers Group Designers Initiatives, the competition aims to inspire, ignite and enable young jewellers with world-class jewellery design and manufacturing skills in each of the De Beers Group diamond producing countries, which are Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Canada. 

The competition runs every two years, and is open to jewellery designers aged 18-35 years who are in their final year, have graduated from a jewellery design programme or have relevant experience in jewellery design. 

The theme for this year’s competition is: Luxury Redefined, and it recognises the power of millennials and Gen Zs to tell their story through design. 

“The theme gives our entrants the space to really create something that accurately reflects their identity and values in today’s era, to define luxury in a brand new way. We are looking forward to seeing how they will interpret the theme,” said Managing Director of De Beers Managed Operations, Moses Madondo. 

Madondo said the SLA have evolved over the past years from being just a jewellery design competition to an initiative that celebrates and capacitates jewellery design talent. 

He said the awards created new and optimised existing facets of the diamond value chain from jewellery design and manufacturing to sales, marketing and entrepreneurship. 

The De Beers Group SLA hosted in-person workshops in May at various institutions across Botswana, South Africa and Namibia engaging with talented students and nurturing potential future winners of the SLA 2024, with the goal to build lasting rapport, answer questions and inspiring greatness among aspiring participants. 

With the prize pool for this year’s competition set at R1.6 million per country, aspiring participants are urged to visit social media pages of SLA on how to submit their entries. 

The social media pages are Facebook handle on Shining Lights Awards and Instagram on handle Shininglightawards. 

Winners from the four producer countries will be announced in November at a prestigious gala awards ceremony in Johannesburg, South Africa, following judging by an esteemed international panel. Ends