NEED TO KNOW
Getting Polished
BOTSWANA
The president of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi, appeared transfixed recently as he held up the rough-hewn, 2,492-carat diamond in his hands. The rock, he said, would finance the future.
“Kids going to school. Food coming in,” Masisi said at a press conference. “It’s a real diamond. Coming from a real country brought out by real people impacting real people.”
Diamonds and power have long been friends, especially in southern Africa.
Gems in the British crown jewels, for instance, include shards of the Cullinan diamond, the largest ever found, wrote the Washington Post. The Cullinan was a 3,106-carat stone mined in South Africa in 1905. Other shards figure in other British royal household rituals.
Masisi and his allies have sought to wrest control of the diamond industry from the London-based De Beers Group and created the Diamonds for Development Fund to steer diamond revenues into local economic development, National Jeweler reported. He has also proposed requiring mining companies to sell a 24 percent stake in mines to local investors or the government, Reuters added.
Diamonds have arguably given Botswana headaches, too, however. Speaking to France 24 at a summit of the Group of Seven in Paris, Masisi criticized the bloc’s mandate that all diamonds sold in the wealthy bloc receive certification in Belgium to prevent Russia from profiting from the diamond trade. During the same event, he said Africa should leverage its resources to produce its own vaccines rather than relying on foreign relief to maintain public health, a problem underscored during the Covid-19 pandemic and more recently the outbreak of Mpox.
Masisi has maintained good relations with the US in a bid to hedge potential problems related to Russian commerce. African defense leaders recently met in Botswana, for example, to discuss security challenges on the continent, reported Voice of America. The US organized the meeting in part to counter the expansion of Russian influence in sub-Saharan Africa.
The recently discovered 2,492-carat diamond was in an area that has previously produced many precious stones due to the region’s volcanic activity in the distant past. “All of the stars aligned with that volcanic eruption, and the conditions were just perfect,” diamond expert Paul Zimnisky told the New York Times.
Even diamonds can’t solve all of Botswana’s problems, unfortunately. The value of the stone has slumped recently, dragging on the country’s economy, wrote Bloomberg. These shifts are tough for a landlocked nation that faces unique challenges due to its lack of access to the sea, the United Nations noted.
Still, the country has growing clout and vigorously pushed back on Europe recently when it felt itself slighted or taken advantage of. For example, when the United Kingdom tried to make a deal to send asylum seekers landing on its shores to Botswana for processing, the country said no (Rwanda accepted the deal).
Then earlier this year, European countries including Germany pushed for a ban on trophies from hunting elephants and other wildlife in Africa for conservation reasons. Botswana, with the world’s largest elephant population, reacted by offering to send 20,000 elephants to Germany. “It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana,” Masisi said.
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