President Mokgweetsi Masisi has been increasingly vocal in criticizing the 54-year-old agreement, and threatened to walk away if it didn’t provide more benefit to his country, including a provision for Botswana to receive a larger allocation of the gems produced there.
De Beers has agreed to hand over more diamonds to Botswana’s government, further weakening the one-time monopoly’s hold on the global gem market, in negotiations that concluded just as the latest deadline for a deal expired.
The arrangement between the gem giant and the world’s second-largest producer is crucial to both sides and plays a central role in the global diamond supply chain.
