Economics – Industry & Resources · Editorial
By Moakanyi Magazine · Global Issue · June 2026
Botswana has spent a generation telling a single story about what comes out of its ground. Diamonds built the roads, the reserves and the reputation, and for most of that time the concentration was a strength rather than a weakness. So when diamond softness fed into pressure on the sovereign rating, the question was not whether the country could mine, but whether it had more than one mineral story to tell. In the same year, Gaborone began to answer it – signing energy and mineral exploration deals with Oman, and pushing solar alongside the stones.
The shift is less a break than a widening. A diamond-dependent economy does not stop being a diamond economy overnight, and nothing in the agreements asks it to. But the deals signal that the state is treating energy and a broader mineral base as part of the same national balance sheet, rather than a side project pursued when the diamond market is generous and shelved when it is not.
From one mineral to a portfolio
For decades the concentration risk was tolerable because diamonds delivered the revenue, the foreign exchange and the fiscal room. When the global stone market softens, that same concentration becomes the exposure, and the strength turns into the vulnerability. The Oman deals, reported by Reuters, point at exploration beyond the established diamond fields – the early, unglamorous stage where a more diversified resource base is either found or it is not.
Exploration is a long game. It does not move the budget this year or next, and most of what is explored never becomes a mine. But a country that wants a second and third leg under its economy has to start where every mineral story starts: drilling, surveying and the patient work of finding out what is actually there. The value of the agreements is that they put the state in that early position rather than waiting for the next downturn to begin looking.
A country with one mineral has a price; a country with several has a strategy.
Why solar belongs in the same sentence
Energy is not a distraction from minerals – it is the cost line underneath them. Mines, processing and the towns around Jwaneng, Orapa and Selebi-Phikwe all run on power, and power is one of the larger inputs in any extractive economy. Solar deals matter to a country that has historically imported a share of its electricity, because cheaper, home-generated power lowers the cost of doing almost everything else, mining very much included.
Paired with mineral exploration, the energy side of the agreements reads as infrastructure for the next economy rather than a green gesture made for the optics. The two move together. New minerals need power to extract and process, and new power makes the wider economy less hostage to a single export and a single imported input. Solar abundance is one of the few natural endowments Botswana can develop without waiting on a global price cycle to cooperate.
The cheapest mineral is the one you do not have to import the power to dig.
Oman as a partner choice
The choice of partner says something too. Gulf capital has been moving steadily into African energy and resources, bringing both money and a long investment horizon that suits exploration work. For Botswana, a partner whose interest spans energy and minerals together fits the shape of the strategy rather than cutting across it, and broadens the country's circle of investors beyond its traditional diamond and Western relationships.
Diversifying partners is its own kind of hedge. An economy that draws investment from several directions is less exposed to any single one of them changing its mind, just as an economy that mines several minerals is less exposed to any single price. The Oman deals widen both the resource base and the list of who is willing to back it.
Spreading your partners is the same discipline as spreading your minerals.
The transition is a hedge, not a farewell
None of this retires diamonds. Debswana and the stones remain the centre of the fiscal story for now, and a single year of exploration deals does not change that. What the agreements do is start building the second and third legs of the stool, so that the next time a global diamond cycle turns, the rating pressure has something to push against rather than a single export carrying the whole weight.
For a Botswana operator, the read is patience with intent. Exploration deals take years to become production, and solar capacity takes time to plan and connect. There is no quick revenue here and no reason to expect one. But the direction – from one mineral to a portfolio, with energy as the spine – is the most consequential change in the national story since the mines first opened, and it is worth watching as closely as any diamond auction.
Diversification is not abandoning the diamond; it is no longer betting the country on it.
Sources: Reuters
