In 1966 Botswana’s future looked grim. On the eve of its independence from Britain the country had 12km of paved roads, a hundred secondary-school graduates and a gdp per person that was half the average in sub-Saharan Africa. Today it has the highest average income on the African mainland, save for the odd petrostate. And it has always been a democracy.
This success would have been impossible without diamonds. In 1967 De Beers, which then had a near-monopoly of global production and today remains the largest miner by value, discovered what would become Orapa, the world’s biggest open-pit diamond mine. Whereas such windfalls have been squandered across Africa, Botswana’s first few leaders forged a productive partnership with the firm. They used the proceeds from diamond mining to keep public debt low and create rainy-day funds, all the while improving health care, education and infrastructure.
Source link : https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/06/08/botswana-an-african-success-story-looks-ever-less-exceptional
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Publish date : 2023-06-08 07:00:00
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