De Beers committed to investing an initial 1 billion pula ($75 million USD) into a development fund aimed at diversifying Botswana's economy, a figure scaling up to 10 billion pula over the course of the contract.
Introduction Botswana’s transformation from one of the world’s poorest countries at independence in 1966 to a middle-income African state is widely credited to diamond revenues. Discovered in the late 1960s, diamonds became the engine of Botswana’s economy through a partnership with De Beers, the dominant global diamond company for much of the 20th century. That relationship—centered on the Debswana joint venture (50/50 ownership between the Botswana government and De Beers)—has produced sustained government revenues, infrastructure development, and macroeconomic stability. Yet critics argue Botswana has not captured the full value of its natural resource wealth and continues to receive an unfair share relative to global diamond profits. This essay assesses whether Botswana is “getting a raw deal” from De Beers by examining the historical arrangement, revenue flows, governance and policy choices, value capture beyond mining, market structure and bargaining power, recent contractual changes, and alternative measures of fairness. De Beers committed to investing an initial 1
Historically, the vast majority of profits in the diamond pipeline are generated in the "downstream" sectors—cutting, polishing, marketing, and retail. For decades, Botswana exported raw materials (rough diamonds) and imported finished luxury goods, missing out on billions in added value. Historically, the vast majority of profits in the
I can't reproduce the full copyrighted text of that article here, but I can summarize the key arguments typically made in such analyses, as well as the general debate around Botswana's diamond deal with De Beers. and retail. For decades