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Discover how the natural diamond industry helped transform the now thriving Southern African country with brilliant Botswana diamonds.
Botswana, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, is both the birthplace of modern humans over 200,000 years ago and brilliant diamonds billions of years before that. The discovery of the first significant deposit of diamonds in Botswana happened in 1967, just one year after the country gained independence from Britain.
At that time, it was the third poorest country in the world, with minimal infrastructure and an almost total void of formal education. The country’s founding president, Sir Seretse Khama, made it his mission to build a government with an ambitious economic development program centered around the country’s resources.
Natural diamonds quickly became the cornerstone of Botswana’s economic development. All diamond mining in Botswana operates under a licensing agreement with the government. In this agreement, 80 percent of diamond-related revenues are put back into the country’s economy. Today, Botswana is the world’s number one diamond-producing country by value. Botswana diamonds and the industry as a whole account for 30 percent of the country’s GDP and 80 percent of its exports.
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