President Mokgweetsi Masisi basked in a moment of triumph on 22 August, as he unveiled the largest diamond discovered anywhere in the world for more than a century to an excited crowd of journalists and officials in Gaborone. “What?!” he exclaimed, his eyes popping with delight as he felt the weight of the stone. “I am lucky to have seen it in my time.”
The presentation of the second-largest diamond ever wrenched from the Earth appears to be the latest glittering chapter in Botswana’s success story. The stone, extracted from the Karowe mine by Canadian company Lucara, provides seemingly irrefutable evidence that the southern African nation remains a diamond superpower.
“We are ecstatic about the recovery of this extraordinary 2,492-carat diamond,” said William Lamb, president and CEO of Lucara in a statement. “This discovery reinforces Karowe’s position as a truly world-class diamond mine.” Lamb’s ecstasy is unsurprising, given that the stone is thought to be worth more than $40m.
For the rest of this article: https://african.business/2024/09/resources/diamonds-arent-forever-botswana-looks-beyond-mining