There is a particular kind of audacity in wanting to buy the company that has, for over a century, set the price of the thing your entire economy depends on. That is exactly what Botswana is attempting with De Beers. President Duma Boko has said it clearly, repeatedly, and publicly: Botswana intends to acquire a majority stake — more than 50 percent — in the 138-year-old diamond company that Anglo American is selling off. He has visited Oman, courted the UAE, briefed Bloomberg, and dismissed the IMF’s warnings from a podium in Kanye. The ambition is not subtle. The question is whether it is wise.
This is not a simple corporate acquisition. It is, as one analyst put it, an act of macroeconomic self-determination — and it carries exactly the risks that phrase implies.
The Case for Buying
Botswana is not a passive bystander in the diamond world. The country hosts more than two-thirds of De Beers’ rough stone production, including Jwaneng — widely regarded by industry analysts as the world’s highest-value diamond mine by revenue per tonne of ore processed. Botswana already owns 15 percent of De Beers and receives, through Debswana, its 50-50 joint venture with De Beers, roughly half of all diamond production revenue. Yet for decades, the price at which those rough stones enter the market, the sightholders who buy them, and the brand strategy that determines whether natural diamonds command a premium — all of these have been decisions made in London, not Gaborone.
President Boko’s argument is that majority ownership would fundamentally change that. At more than 50 percent, Botswana would move from passive equity participant to active commercial decision-maker, with direct influence over rough stone valuations, the distribution of value-added cutting and polishing activity, and critically, the marketing strategy that attempts to defend natural diamonds against the lab-grown onslaught. He has also said that if the acquisition succeeds, De Beers’ headquarters would relocate from London to Botswana — a statement that is partly symbolic and partly substantive, since it speaks directly to where jobs, professional services, and fiscal contribution land.
That last point matters more than it is given credit for. One of the persistent criticisms of the diamond sector in Botswana is that the country extracts the stones but captures limited value from the layers of commerce built around them. A controlling stake in De Beers would, in theory, be the most decisive intervention ever attempted to change that.
The question is not whether Botswana deserves more from its diamonds. It does. The question is whether buying De Beers is the right instrument, at this particular moment, to get it.
The Case Against
The IMF was blunt. In its December 2025 consultation, the Fund advised Botswana against increasing its stake in De Beers, citing the country’s fiscal situation and its already dangerous concentration in a sector facing structural headwinds. Boko pushed back publicly. But the IMF’s concern was not ideological — it was arithmetic.
Botswana’s sovereign wealth fund — the old Pula Fund — has been drained by successive deficits. The new Botswana Sovereign Wealth Fund Limited was launched in September 2025 specifically to replace it, but with an initial mandate focused on returns management and state-owned enterprise professionalisation, not a multi-billion-dollar diamond company acquisition. Moody’s revised Botswana’s outlook to negative in April 2025. S&P downgraded the country to BBB with a negative outlook in September 2025. The national budget deficit widened to 9 percent of GDP, nearly double the year before. And diamond revenue — the source from which any De Beers acquisition would ultimately be justified — fell from roughly P24 billion in 2022/23 to approximately P7.4 billion by 2024/25.
Into this fiscal environment, the government is contemplating the purchase of a controlling stake in a company whose market is in structural decline. Natural diamond prices have fallen roughly 30 percent since 2022. Lab-grown diamonds, which claimed around 1 percent of US sales in 2015, now account for nearly half of engagement ring purchases. S&P Global Ratings’ own lead analyst on the sector has said, with unusual directness, that diamond prices are “unlikely to ever come back.”
The financing complexity compounds the risk. President Boko has confirmed discussions with Oman’s sovereign wealth fund and the UAE as preferred financing partners. A presidential visit to Oman preceded the April 2026 bid deadline. But as of mid-2026, no binding financial commitment has been publicly confirmed, and the acquisition structure — who holds what, who provides what, and on what terms — remains undisclosed. Binding offers have been extended once already. Anglo American is shortlisting private bidders simultaneously, and Botswana’s insistence on majority control is, by multiple accounts, complicating the overall sale process and deterring some private investors.
The Strategic Paradox
Here is the deepest tension in the De Beers acquisition debate: Botswana is being asked to concentrate more of its capital in a sector it simultaneously acknowledges it must diversify away from. The Botswana Economic Transformation Programme — the government’s own diversification agenda — rests on four pillars: a services-led economy, regional financial hub status, investor attraction through political stability, and inclusive growth. None of those pillars are strengthened by owning more of a struggling diamond company.
There is a version of the De Beers acquisition that makes strategic sense: a minority stake that gives Botswana genuine governance rights and marketing input, financed in a way that does not put the sovereign balance sheet at risk, structured as part of a broader sector reform rather than as a statement of national pride. President Boko has, at times, suggested Botswana might accept a position short of outright majority. That version of the deal is more defensible. Whether the political narrative has allowed the negotiating room to get there is a separate question.
Desire vs. Capacity: The Gap Botswana Cannot Afford to Ignore
Botswana’s frustration with its historical position in the diamond value chain is legitimate and long overdue for structural redress. The country has produced the world’s most valuable diamonds for fifty years and has, by most measures, been a responsible steward of that wealth. The argument that it should now have more control over what happens to those diamonds before they reach consumers is not unreasonable. But desire for control and capacity to absorb the risk of ownership are different things — and at this particular moment, with the fiscal buffers depleted, the diamond market structurally challenged, and the diversification agenda still in its infancy, the distance between those two things is large. Botswana may yet own De Beers. The harder question is whether it can afford to.
Sources: Bank of Botswana; Mmegi; Daily News; Bloomberg; JCK; News24; Discovery Alert; PACT Africa; IMF Article IV Consultation (2025); S&P Global Ratings