Economics – Trade & AfCFTA · Editorial
By Moakanyi Magazine · June 2026
For decades Botswana mined the diamonds and someone else captured most of the trading margin. The 2023 sales agreement with De Beers set out to narrow that gap, moving the country closer to the value that flows from selling stones rather than only digging them. The shift is gradual and partial, but the direction is the point: a producer trying to become a seller in its own right.
The deal gradually raises Botswana's share of Debswana production from 30% to 50%, and pairs that with a 25-year mining licence and a P1 billion beneficiation fund, as reported by Reuters. Three levers sit in one agreement: more stones, more time, and money to build local processing. Each addresses a different weakness in the old arrangement, and together they read as an attempt to capture not just a bigger slice but a more durable one.
The Share: From 30% to 50% of the Sales Stream
Raising the country's allocation toward half the production means more rough flows through Botswana's own channels, the Okavango Diamond Company among them. The increase is gradual rather than immediate, but the direction moves real volume, and the margin attached to it, onto the domestic side of the ledger. Selling a stone, rather than handing it to someone else to sell, captures the trading spread that has historically accrued elsewhere in the chain.
A larger share of the sales stream is leverage as well as income. It gives the country a bigger position in how its own diamonds reach the market, not just how they leave the ground. Volume in hand is bargaining power: a seller routing more stones independently has more options, more market intelligence and a stronger seat the next time the terms are negotiated. The 30-to-50 move is as much about future positioning as present revenue.
Half the stones in your own hands is a different negotiating position from a third.
The Anchor: A 25-Year Licence and the Value of Time
The 25-year mining licence supplies the one thing diamond planning needs most and rarely gets: a long horizon. Investment in processing, plant and skills is hard to justify against a short renewal, because the assets take years to pay back and the people take years to train. A quarter-century of certainty changes that calculus, letting both the state and private partners commit capital that only makes sense over a long arc.
That horizon matters beyond the mines themselves. Banks lend differently, suppliers invest differently and skills programmes plan differently when the underlying licence is secure for a generation rather than renewed in short cycles. Stability of tenure is itself an economic input, and the deal treats it as one, lowering the risk premium on every decision that depends on the mine still being there in a decade.
A long licence is permission to build things that take years to pay back.
The Build: A Beneficiation Fund With Money Attached
The P1 billion beneficiation fund attaches money to the intent. Beneficiation, the cutting, polishing and the trades around it, is how a country keeps value at home instead of exporting it raw. Rough that leaves Botswana for processing elsewhere takes its jobs and margin with it; the same stone finished locally leaves a wider footprint behind. A dedicated fund is a signal that the larger share is meant to seed an industry, not just bank a margin.
The harder part, as with any beneficiation drive, is competing on cost and skill with established cutting centres abroad, which a fund alone does not solve. But pairing the money with the larger share and the long licence is a more coherent attempt than any one of those moves on its own. Stones to process, time to build, and capital to start with are at least the right three ingredients in the same place, which is more than most resource economies manage to assemble at once.
A beneficiation fund turns a bigger share into a reason to keep the work at home.
The 2023 deal does not end Botswana's diamond dependence, and on its own it cannot. But it changes the terms of that dependence. More of the stones, a longer runway and money to add value locally are the components of a country trying to own more of its own resource story, one negotiated percentage at a time. The test will be whether the beneficiation that the fund and the share are meant to build actually takes root, or whether the larger slice is simply sold on in rougher form.
Sources: Reuters
