In volume terms, Botswana is Africa’s largest diamond producer and the world’s second largest. While Angola is unlikely to challenge that position in the near term, it is steadily emerging as a major force in the industry.

Botswana's Mines Minister promised increased public investment in exploring minerals beyond diamonds at this week's Mining Indaba conference in South Africa. The message delivered by Bogolo Joy Kenewendo contrasts sharply with Angola's announcement at the same event of a significant increase in diamond production by 2027. The crisis gripping the diamond market is giving Luanda an opportunity to challenge Gaborone's historic leadership in the sector across Africa.

Angola already narrowed the gap in 2024, extracting 14.02 million carats compared to Botswana's 18.12 million carats. By comparison, Botswana's production the previous year (25.09 million carats) was more than double Angola's (9.75 million carats). Gaborone decided to reduce extraction volumes to cope with falling demand and prices over the past three years. Highlighting the severity of this crisis, Botswana's stockpiles reached 12 million carats at the end of 2025, nearly double the authorized maximum in principle (6.5 million).

Far from adopting the same strategy, Luanda is working to increase extraction volumes. According to an official brochure distributed at Mining Indaba, state-owned company Endiama announced the country should produce 17 million carats by 2027. That would represent a 12 percent jump from the 15.2 million carats reported for 2025. While Angola's production increase may raise questions in the current context, it fits squarely within the ambition of the national development plan for 2023-2027.

The plan calls for bringing several diamond projects into production during the period, with the opening of the first mine in the batch (Luele) at the end of 2023. Described as the country's largest, it has estimated resources of 628 million carats, with a projected lifespan of 60 years. The country is also banking on the quality of its stones, which rival those from Botswana. Despite lower volume, the value of Angola's diamond production reached $1.41 billion in 2024, compared to $1.35 billion for Botswana.

Eyes on De Beers

Growth in Angola's diamond sector should also come through local processing. The development plan indicates the government's desire to gain market share in downstream segments of the value chain, with the construction of dozens of cutting factories and the establishment of a diamond exchange. Luanda also wants to gain control of an industry giant, De Beers.

With the group up for sale by owner Anglo American, Angola wants to take a stake in the capital, alongside Botswana. Already holding a 15 percent stake in De Beers, Gaborone wants to take full control of a group that still draws 70 percent of its production from the southern African country. While this ambition could be thwarted by Luanda's, another path is open to both countries: cooperation.

Angola did submit an initial offer to acquire a majority stake, according to information reported in October 2025 by several international media outlets, but the idea would be to buy De Beers through a consortium involving other African producers. Under this logic, Luanda is targeting a stake of between 20 and 30 percent. Confidential negotiations are reportedly underway with Botswana, South Africa and Namibia on the matter. "Taking the majority stake within luxury commodities is very dangerous because it depends on the market," Paulo Tanganha, Angola's national director of mineral resources, said in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the conference in South Africa.

While an upcoming improvement in market conditions could widen the gap between Botswana and Angola's production volumes, Luanda's efforts could over time strengthen the position of these precious stones in the national economy. Through an initiative launched in June 2025 to improve the image of natural diamonds against growing competition from synthetic diamonds, Angola is working alongside other African countries and industry players to revive demand for mined stones.

Short of the prominent role they occupy in Botswana (one-third of public revenues and roughly 75 percent of foreign exchange earnings), diamonds could thus reduce Angola's dependence on oil. By 2050, Luanda wants to raise the mining sector's share to 2.3 percent of Angolan GDP, from 1.3 percent in 2022.

Emiliano Tossou