Article from Diplomatika magazine – N°03 By Maminiaina Cédrick RAMAROSON, Doctor of Economics, Professor at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the University of Fianarantsoa (Madagascar)
From Botswana diamond to Congolese and Zambian copper, several African States are seeking to regain control over the governance and development of their strategic resources. The battle around De Beers illustrates this desire to move from being a supplier of raw materials to a player in the value chain, while revealing the limits of sovereignty still dependent on capital and external markets..
A diamond giant for sale, and a sovereignty battle
For nearly a century and a half, De Beers has been the sole embodiment of the history of industrial diamond: from the discovery of the Kimberley deposits to the construction of a world quasi-monopoly on the trading of rough diamonds. In 2026, this giant changed hands again, and this time it was not only financial investors who were fighting over the company, but the producer states themselves.
According to information reported by Mining.com, Anglo American, which owns 85% of De Beers, has undertaken the divestment of its stake as part of a restructuring initiated almost 18 months ago, in a context of a prolonged slowdown in the diamond market and increasing competition for synthetic stones.
Botswana, a historical minority shareholder, holds the remaining 15% of the capital. It is in this context of surrender that Gaborone chose to play a completely different role than that of spectator.
Botswana wants to move from pension to governance
Botswana now owns 15% of De Beers and seeks to raise this participation beyond 50% in order to obtain what its government calls a « effective control » the diamond industry. President Duma Boko has expressed this ambition publicly on several occasions since autumn 2025; the specialized newsletter Africa Confidential reports that he announced it, inter alia, from New York on 22 September, stating that his Government was preparing a majority stake in the conglomerate with the aim of finalising a transaction by the end of October.
The argument put forward by Gaborone is not only financial, it is structural. Analysis of the firm Discovery Alert A 15% stake in a company in which Anglo American controls 85% of the capital has never given Botswana any real influence over decisions determining the effective value of its own diamonds on the world market.
The system of allocation of rough diamond lots to tailors and polishers « lightholder system » functioning as a commercial tool that shapes world price references. In other words, producing the raw material is not enough to capture its value if price, brand or distribution are not controlled.
The economic weight of this bet is considerable. According to News24, more than two thirds of the raw stones marketed by De Beers are extracted from the Botswana basement; Mining.com also notes that diamond accounts for about 80 per cent of the country's exports, a dependency that explains both the urgency of the approach and its fragility, with Botswana risking further concentrating its exposure to a single sector in cyclical difficulty rather than diversifying it.
To finance an operation of this magnitude, Gaborone had to look for financial partners outside the mining industry itself.
Bloomberg revealed that the country has engaged in discussions with the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman to help acquire participation in the process. « strategic » in De Beers, following contacts with a Gulf sovereign fund from the previous year; Africa Confidential It also refers to Qatari commitments of up to $12 billion, partly to support this ambition.
This use of external capital illustrates a central tension in the case: taking over the governance of a national resource often involves severing or associating with other financial powers, which shifts the question of sovereignty more than it fully resolves.
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