Botswana has a problem: US consumers don’t know diamonds come from there. They might not even know where it is.
That’s why the African nation has exhibited at three consecutive JCK Las Vegas shows, aiming to inform both the industry and the public about what it dubs its “development diamonds” — products that support the country’s environment and socioeconomic advancement.
The vehicle for this has been House of Botswana, an umbrella brand for the African country’s diamond industry. It took its first booth at the US’s biggest diamond and jewelry fair in 2024, promoting its various stakeholders, including miner Debswana and state-owned trader Okavango Diamond Company (ODC).
The purpose is to demonstrate the value of Botswana’s natural diamonds and the care it takes to protect the environment and society, said Andrew Maatla Motsomi, CEO of Debswana. The business is a 50:50 joint venture between De Beers and the Botswana government and extracts rough at the country’s Jwaneng and Orapa mines.
Motsomi spoke with Rapaport News at the show in late May, explaining why the company is focusing on origin to market the country’s diamonds. He assesses the state of the market, fields questions on De Beers, and tackles the difficult topic of how to align production with demand when diamond preferences have become so focused.
He also ties in the show with Botswana’s recent hosting of the World Athletics Relays, which the country used as a way of putting itself “on the map.” The sports event coincided with the 60th anniversary of its independence — its diamond jubilee — and saw locally sourced diamonds mounted into the winners’ medals. De Beers sightholders Ankit Gems and Shree Ramkrishna Exports (SRK) cut and polished the 120 stones at their factories in Botswana in partnership with ODC.
The interview has been edited for length.
How do you benefit from coming to this show?
The diamond market has not been doing well since the latter part of 2023. As a natural-diamond producer, we come to this forum to drive our narrative, which seeks to promote Botswana diamonds as development diamonds. We try to indicate the value we attach to natural diamonds as having more [of] a story behind [them compared with] lab-grown diamonds.
Do American consumers know that a lot of diamonds come from Botswana?
That is the other dimension. Modern consumers obviously want to know where the diamonds are coming from. That’s another line of projecting Botswana diamonds, but at the same time making sure that the market knows that we mine these diamonds [in] Botswana, [that they’re mined] sustainably, that revenue makes a difference in the socioeconomic life of the communities around our mines.
Do you think American consumers know what Botswana is?
I cannot attest to the fact that American consumers would know. That is the key thing that we are trying to do. For instance, recently, we have sponsored the 2026 World [Athletics] Relays [in Botswana], which was part of trying to help put Botswana on the map. It’s a global event, and you had some American athletes taking part in those relay competitions. Okavango Diamond Company for the first time [made] history by having medals that are embedded with diamonds. That is a broader, more sustained effort to ensure that we try to project the image of Botswana. However, I was disappointed when I arrived here at the airport in Las Vegas. I could tell that the gentleman asking questions [had] concerns around Ebola. [Botswana has not recorded any cases of Ebola. – Rapaport News] So we clearly have a long way to go. It’s something that we can work on.
Have you seen any impact on consumer awareness of Botswana over the years that the country has had a representation at the JCK show?
There is quite a big push by both sides, the government and De Beers, to sensitize the American consumers about Botswana and Botswana diamonds. That is not something you’d expect to bear benefits in the short term…. These efforts do bear benefits, but in the medium to long term.
What is your view of the diamond market at the moment?
We certainly are not out of the woods in terms of the performance of the diamond market. We clearly had hoped that this year things would recover. But obviously, one has to appreciate that this is not the typical cyclical downturn in the demand for diamonds that we saw previously. Several factors have [conspired] to make this a much more sustained and slower recovery. Geopolitical tensions have played a role. The American tariffs have played their role. The American war in [Iran and] a very sharp increase in the dollar price of crude oil [have] meant that what we had hoped would be a more sustained recovery [has] been undermined by this very sharp increase in the price of crude oil.
What’s your outlook for diamond production?
We [have] adopted a strategy of trying to tailor our production plans to demand. There was an oversupply of diamonds in the market. So it did not make a lot of sense in the past two years, 2023, 2024, to ramp up production a lot. [The goal was] to avoid a situation where we produced at a high cost but then [had] to stockpile instead of pushing [goods] to the market.
One of the themes at the show is that the market is becoming more and more focused and niche. A mine can obviously control the volumes that it’s producing, but it can’t control what it’s producing. How do you deal with that challenge?
It is a big challenge. You cannot predict whether you’ll be getting large or small stones in [a] particular pipe. [A pipe] will yield a variety of stone sizes. You cannot tailor production to ensure that you get out of the ground a specific size of stone. What has been selling well more recently has been the larger stones, whilst the smaller stones have not been doing very well. I don’t think I can say we have an immediate solution to that. But we continue to exercise our minds [on finding] ways of addressing it. It’s not an easy thing. Some [pipes may have the potential to yield] higher[-value] or larger stones in a specific pipe, but certainly there is no predictability in that regard.
What would be the possible solutions? Could it be that you’ll find another destination for the less desirable goods, selling more for industrial diamonds?
I can’t really talk to specific solutions to that, but as I say, that is something that we are exercising our minds around.
What role does Debswana play in decisions that De Beers makes around its pricing?
We are primarily a price taker [an entity that must accept another’s price]. Two of our offtakers [are] De Beers and then we have Okavango Diamond Company, with De Beers taking 70% of our production, ODC taking 30%. For us in the upstream, we produce, but certainly we do not by any means determine the price at which we sell our product.
What about decisions around how much supply De Beers makes available? What influence do you have on that?
As…the largest producer within De Beers Group, when it comes to production decisions, those ones we do have a say in. The issue of cost has been paramount. Revenues [have been] coming down, prices [have been] coming down, and obviously the only area where we control this was to look at what we do about reducing the cost of production. Through our management, through our board, we are able to have at least an input into production plans, into what we produce this year, what we’re producing next year, [and] if there is a need either to suspend [or] close some plants as a way of cutting costs.
Once the rough has been produced, do you have any say in how much of it De Beers makes available to sightholders or whether it withholds some of the production?
That is something that is outside our scope of influence. Once we have produced [the rough], we do not dictate to De Beers what they sell and what they can’t sell.
How do you expect Anglo American’s potential sale of De Beers to affect you?
Well, the first thing is that the sale of De Beers by Anglo American is primarily a matter for the shareholders. It is a matter which one is not quite at liberty to talk about. But I think the critical thing is that we continue to operate as one of the subsidiaries, as one of the companies that operate within the De Beers Group. We are a more important player in terms of contribution to production within the De Beers Group. We just have to await the final outcome and see who takes over De Beers. The expectation is that the transaction will be concluded at some stage, and we will continue to operate our mines.
At the JCK show, De Beers CEO Al Cook applauded Angola for its plan to reduce output of small stones. Over the past year, the country had released large quantities of rough into the market. Has the fact that you’re trying to be careful with your production, whereas Angola has been releasing a lot of goods into the market in the last year, made your life harder? Do you feel that what Angola’s been doing has undone some of your work?
I wouldn’t want to really get involved in that particular subject matter. At a broad, general [level], there are a lot of goods in the market. It’s something that ultimately affects us to the extent that it affects the sustainability or recovery of prices. For us as a business, my challenge, or my mandate as the CEO of Debswana, is to ensure that we produce responsibly in order to ensure a more sustainable price trajectory.
Are there any other observations from the show that you would like to share?
The show provides a good platform for [us] to articulate the key things that we are doing as a company, what we are doing to ensure that we project the credentials of our mining operations, that we’re mining our diamonds sustainably, [that] we care about the environment. Botswana is a country that is about the size of France. Forty percent of [the land] is allocated to the preservation of flora and fauna. Debswana itself has taken a big initiative…around ensuring that we repopulate the rhino in our game parks around our two mines, Orapa and Jwaneng. We’ve multiplied them to the extent that [we have had to] translocate them out of the parks due to them exceeding their numbers, exceeding carrying capacity. That obviously shows that we care about the environment.
Image: Andrew Maatla Motsomi. (Debswana)
