Profiles – Women in Business & Rising Stars · Editorial

By Moakanyi Magazine · Global Issue · June 2026

A landlocked diamond economy looking to change its shape eventually has to look for partners it has not used before. President Duma Boko's visit to Oman, which produced energy and mineral exploration deals, is best read in that light: a deliberate widening of the circle of countries Botswana does serious business with. The agreements are about energy and minerals, but the deeper move is diplomatic – sourcing capital and expertise from the Gulf rather than only from familiar quarters.

For a country whose external economic story has long been told through diamonds, the EU beef market and its SADC neighbours, a Gulf partnership is a new sentence. It signals that the diversification ambition is not only about new minerals at home but about new relationships abroad to fund and develop them. A diamond economy that has spent sixty years facing west and south is, with a visit like this, learning to face east as well.

Why the Gulf, and why now

Gulf states sit on pools of capital actively looking for places to deploy beyond hydrocarbons, and energy and minerals are exactly the kind of long-horizon assets that suit them. For Botswana, that patient capital is scarce and valuable – the sort of money a critical-minerals or energy build-out needs and cannot easily raise from short-term lenders. Gulf investors are also accustomed to the long timelines that mining and power projects demand, which makes them a natural fit for assets that take years to mature.

The timing aligns with Botswana's own pivot. With diamonds under pressure and a push to expand exploration beyond them, the country needs partners willing to fund the slow, uncertain front end of new sectors. Oman is not a traditional counterpart, and that is partly the point: a wider set of partners means less exposure to the moods of any single market or region. A country tied to too few partners inherits all of their cycles at once; one with a broader roster can lean on whichever relationship is strongest at the time.

New partners abroad are the other half of diversification at home, and the harder half to arrange.

Energy: the constraint behind every other ambition

Energy agreements deserve particular attention because energy is the constraint sitting behind almost every Botswana ambition. Mining, processing, manufacturing and a modern services economy all run on reliable, affordable power, and the region's supply has been anything but assured. A partnership that strengthens Botswana's energy position is therefore upstream of much of the diversification agenda.

The exact shape of these arrangements carries a [TK] where the detail is still to be confirmed, and it should be read as reported intent rather than completed fact. But the direction is clear: securing energy is treated not as a side deal but as a precondition. A country that cannot guarantee power cannot credibly invite investment into power-hungry industries, and the Oman track addresses that directly. Mineral processing in particular is enormously energy-intensive, so the energy and minerals strands of the visit are not two stories but one – the second is hostage to the first.

Power is the precondition; every other industrial ambition queues behind it.

Minerals: capital and competence, not just licences

On the minerals side, exploration agreements bring two things Botswana needs in roughly equal measure – capital and competence. Exploration is expensive and technical, and a partner that supplies both lowers the barrier to opening ground that might otherwise stay untested. This dovetails with the national push to look beyond diamonds, giving that ambition external backers as well as domestic intent.

The open question, as always, is where the value lands. Exploration deals can leave a country exporting raw ore and importing the finished goods made from it, or they can be structured to build processing and skills at home. Which path these agreements take is not yet settled, and it is the measure against which the Oman visit will eventually be judged.

An exploration deal is only as good as the value it agrees to leave behind in the host country.

From signature to substance

The hardest part of any state visit comes after the cameras leave. Agreements signed with ceremony have a way of thinning out in implementation, as feasibility studies stall, financing terms tighten and political attention drifts to the next priority. The Oman deals will be worth what is built from them, not what was announced, and that gap between signature and substance is where many promising partnerships quietly expire.

For Botswana, closing that gap is a test of follow-through rather than diplomacy. It requires the unglamorous work of turning memoranda into projects: the licences issued, the studies funded, the local firms in Francistown or Selebi-Phikwe drawn into the supply chain. A government that travels well must also administer well, and the Oman agreements will measure both. The handshake is the easy part; the project pipeline is where the visit either lands or fades.

A signed agreement is a promise; a built project is the proof, and only the proof shows up in the national accounts.

What the visit means for Botswana

For Botswana, the substance of the visit is the diversification of relationships as much as the diversification of the economy. A country that depends on a narrow set of markets and partners is hostage to their cycles; one that spreads its partnerships across regions has more room to manoeuvre when any single market turns. The Oman deals add a Gulf line to that map.

There is also a signal to other investors. A government that travels to secure energy and mineral partnerships is telling the wider market that it is open, active and willing to do business in new directions. That signal matters for how Botswana is weighed against neighbours competing for the same patient capital – South Africa, Namibia and others making their own pitches. Capital pays attention to momentum, and a country visibly assembling partners reads as a country worth a second look, even by investors with no interest in Oman.

A country that spreads its partners spreads its risk across more than one horizon.

It is worth keeping the scale honest. One visit and a set of agreements do not remake an economy, and the supplied facts describe intent rather than completed projects. Read modestly, the visit is one move in a longer campaign to broaden Botswana's partners and funders – a campaign that will need many such moves, and many of them to deliver, before the country's economic shape visibly changes. The danger in any state visit is to mistake the announcement for the achievement.

The president's profile here is, finally, a profile of method. Diversification cannot be willed into being from inside the country alone; it has to be financed, equipped and properly partnered. By bringing back energy and mineral agreements from a non-traditional partner, Boko has now put one concrete piece of that method on the table. The agreements now have to survive the journey from signature to substance – and that, not the handshake at the ceremony, is where the real test of the visit ultimately lies.

Sources: Reuters