Profiles – Leaders & Changemakers · Editorial
By Moakanyi Magazine · Global Issue · June 2026
Every resource economy reaches the point where the thing that made it rich becomes the thing it cannot rely on. For Botswana that thing is the diamond, and the question of what comes after it has moved from seminar rooms to ministerial policy. Mines minister Bogolo Joy Kenewendo has become the face of that move, fronting a push to expand exploration beyond diamonds into critical minerals.
The framing matters as much as the policy. This is not presented as abandoning diamonds, which still anchor the Pula and the fiscus, but as widening the base beneath them. For a country whose mining identity has been singular for sixty years, asking the geology to do more than one job is itself a shift, and the minister has put her name to it. A single-mineral country tends to think in a single mineral; the harder change is in the habit of mind, not only the licence map.
Critical minerals: what the term actually buys
Critical minerals is shorthand for the inputs that modern supply chains cannot do without and worry about securing – the metals behind batteries, grids and electronics. The category matters to Botswana because demand for it is structural rather than fashionable, tied to a global energy transition that will run for decades. A country that hosts even part of that supply has a seat at a table diamonds never set.
The contrast with diamonds is instructive. A diamond's value rests on desire and marketing, on a story told to a buyer; a critical mineral's value rests on the fact that a factory cannot function without it. That makes critical-mineral demand harder to talk down and less hostage to taste, which is exactly the kind of resilience a diamond-dependent budget would value. It is demand anchored in engineering rather than in fashion.
Exploration, though, is the slow front of mining. It is money spent for years before a single tonne is sold, and most prospects never become mines. Kenewendo's task is to make Botswana attractive to that patient capital – to convince explorers that the licensing, the data and the geology justify drilling here rather than across the border. That is a longer game than a diamond sales cycle, and it is the one she has chosen to lead.
Critical minerals are not a windfall; they are a decade of drilling before the first invoice.
Competing with the neighbours for the drill
Botswana does not pursue exploration capital in a vacuum. South Africa, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and others are courting the same explorers, often with deposits already proven and infrastructure already built. The capital that funds drilling is mobile and impatient, and it goes where the geology, the data and the rules together make the strongest case. A minister fronting a push beyond diamonds is, in part, competing for that capital's attention.
What Botswana can offer against better-endowed rivals is the asset it is best known for: predictability. A stable currency, a functioning state and a reputation for honouring agreements are worth real money to an investor weighing a multi-year commitment. The argument Kenewendo has to make is that Botswana's institutions, not just its rocks, are part of the prospectus. In exploration, where the payoff is distant and uncertain, the trustworthiness of the host can matter as much as the grade of the ore.
Where deposits are unproven, the country's reputation is part of the orebody.
Beyond diamonds without leaving them
The diplomatic core of the push is that it does not insult the diamond. Diamonds remain the largest single source of state revenue and the reason Botswana has the stability to plan at all. The minister's message is additive: build a second mineral story alongside the first, so that a soft diamond market does not translate directly into a soft national budget.
That balance is harder than it sounds. Capital, skills and political attention are finite, and every Pula and every geologist directed at critical minerals is one not spent defending the diamond franchise. Kenewendo has to argue that the two reinforce rather than starve each other – that a more diversified mining sector makes the whole more resilient, including the diamond business everyone already knows.
The smart bet is not diamonds or critical minerals; it is the geology learning to carry both, and the institutions learning to manage more than one prize at a time.
The Botswana operator's stake in the exploration push
For Batswana businesses, the exploration agenda is not only a mining-house concern. New exploration draws service firms, logistics out of Francistown and Selebi-Phikwe, engineering, accommodation and the long supply tail that any drilling campaign pulls behind it. Even prospects that never become mines leave spending in the towns nearest the licences.
There is also a longer reward. A critical-minerals base, if it matures, gives Botswana exposure to value chains – processing, components – that diamonds, sold rough and cut elsewhere, largely denied it. Whether the country captures that or simply exports raw ore again is a policy choice, and it is the kind of choice the minister fronting this push will be measured against. The lesson of the diamond era is precisely that exporting a resource raw leaves most of its value to be added abroad, and a critical-minerals strategy worth the name has to answer that lesson rather than repeat it.
Exploration spends in the towns nearest the licence long before any mine is declared.
Why the minister, and why now
Ministers become emblematic when a policy needs a face the market can trust. Diversification beyond diamonds has been national aspiration for years; what changes when a mines minister fronts it personally is that it acquires accountability. Investors, neighbours and the public have someone to credit if exploration data improves and someone to question if it stalls.
The timing is not accidental either. With the diamond market under pressure and the energy transition pulling hard on critical-mineral supply, the window to position Botswana is open now in a way it may not stay. Kenewendo's wager is that moving early – on licences, on data, on signalling – buys the country a place in chains that will be contested for decades. Latecomers to a resource boom inherit the worst ground and the weakest terms; the producers who shaped the early rules tend to keep the advantage.
That is the real content of this profile. It is less about one minister than about whether Botswana can turn a long-stated ambition into drilled holes and processed metal. The diamond made the country; the open question is whether the next mineral story can be written in time, and the minister fronting it has staked her record on the answer. The measure will not be the speeches or the licences issued, but whether, years from now, a softer diamond market no longer means a softer budget. That is the only test that matters, and it is the one the strategy has set for itself.
A diversification slogan becomes a strategy the moment a minister's name is on the licences and the results are hers to answer for.
Sources: Reuters
