Tanzanian father of 30 gets $4.5 million windfall after mining biggest-ever tanzanite gemstones

A Tanzanian small-scale miner has just become a millionaire after unearthing some of the largest rare gemstones ever recorded.

Fifty-two-year-old Sainiu Laizer was working in a mine in northern Tanzania when he came across two massive tanzanite gemstones. Tanzanite is an extremely rare mineral — in fact the only place in the world where it can be found is within a few kilometres of the mine.

Before this discovery, the largest piece of tanzanite ever found weighed 3.3 kilograms. Laizer’s gemstones weighed 9.2 and 5.8 kilograms, respectively.



Nimepokea simu nyingi za pongezi.
Nawasukuru sana wote mnaonipongesa kwa njia mbalimbali,ahsanteni sana🙏 pic.twitter.com/pBc5PuWyVK

— saniniu laizer (@laizer_saniniu) June 25, 2020

And on June 24, the Tanzanian government paid him 7.74 billion Tanzanian shillings — roughly $4.5 million in Canadian dollars — for the gemstones.

“This is the benefit of small-scale miners and this proves that Tanzania is rich,” Tanzania’s president John Magufilu said in a phone call, according to the BBC .

Laizer has four wives and more than 30 children, it has been reported. He said he would slaughter one of his cows in celebration of the find.

“There will be a big party tomorrow,” Laizer told the BBC, adding that he intends to use the money to build a school and a shopping mall in his community.

Tanzania offers licenses to small-scale miners like Laizer to mine for tanzanite in the region, in an agreement that lets them sell whatever they unearth back to the government.

In 2017, Magufuli ordered the construction of a massive wall around the Manyara region in northern Tanzania, to discourage illegal mining practices.