For decades, it was almost impossible to talk about Botswana’s economy without talking about diamonds. Alongside agriculture and the country’s world-famous wildlife and tourism industry, the gems have long defined Botswana’s economy and the outside world’s perception of it.
But something is changing, says Aobakwe Kobue, Managing Director of Prime Collective Investments’ Botswana business. After decades in which diamond revenues provided an extraordinary degree of security, Botswana is being forced to ask a new question: What’s next?
For Kobue, who has spent 22 years in financial services, the answer is increasingly visible in a fast-growing financial sector, a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors, and a country becoming much more conscious of opportunities that have, in some cases, been there all along.
“Much of what I am today is because of diamonds,” she says. “My education, the opportunities my parents had, even if they weren’t directly in the diamond industry, were because of diamonds.”
It is difficult to overstate what diamonds did for Botswana. They played a leading role in turning the country into one of Africa’s great economic success stories after gaining independence from Britain in 1966. Its diamond deposits include exceptionally valuable gem-quality stones, while the country’s Jwaneng mine is regarded as the world’s richest diamond mine by value.
Importantly, unlike many other African countries, Botswana secured a substantial stake in its own resource wealth through Debswana, its 50:50 joint venture with De Beers. Diamond revenues helped fund infrastructure, public services and an education system that gave generations of Batswana opportunities that would otherwise have been unimaginable.
For Kobue’s generation, that included remarkably generous support for tertiary education. “When I studied for my first degree, it was 75% grant and 25% loan,” she says. Her children’s generation have also benefited from government sponsorship, even while some of their parents are still repaying their own student loans.
But there was another side to that security. “There was a lot of comfort,” Kobue says. “People were not really driven to want more.”
If you performed well enough at school, university and government sponsorship were standard expectations. There was no need to search for scholarships or compete for bursaries, or even to be curious about opportunities outside the established economic model. But now that model is under pressure.
The global natural-diamond market has been hit by weaker demand, particularly from China, high inventories and growing competition from cheaper lab-grown diamonds. Botswana is feeling the consequences acutely.
For Kobue, however, the disruption is a mixed blessing. “There was that panic, yes, but it was also positive,” she says. “I would say that we really needed that. We have been forced to think outside the box, to ask: ‘What else is there? What is next?’”
And what Botswana is discovering, she says, is not necessarily a collection of entirely new opportunities. In many cases, they were already there. The difference is that people are now looking for them.
Financial services provides a striking example. When Prime Collective Investments was established in Botswana in 2014, the local asset management industry was relatively small. Kobue, who joined Prime in 2023, remembers a very different market when she began her career at African Alliance, an early provider of unit trusts in Botswana.
Since then, the industry has expanded dramatically, helped in part by an initiative by the Botswana Public Officers Pension Fund, the country’s largest, to develop citizen-owned investment businesses and allocate institutional capital to emerging local managers.
“Our young people are very aggressive,” Kobue says, approvingly. “They are really driving things in the economy.”
Technology has accelerated that awakening. A generation ago, international financial markets seemed very distant.
“When we talked about stock markets, it was something that we only heard about as a distant concept,” she says. “Technology brought the world closer to us.”
Financial literacy is reaching people earlier, too. Kobue encountered information about finance and investment only when she got to university. Today, she says, children are exposed to investment concepts as early as junior school.
Prime Collective Investments occupies an interesting position in this changing market. Botswana increasingly wants to develop its own financial-services capability, making a genuinely local presence important.
“In Botswana, when you are talking about a foreigner, the first thing that comes to mind is: ‘Why can’t a Motswana do it?’” Kobue says. Her own roots provide an answer. After more than two decades in the industry, she is no newcomer parachuted in. Clients, competitors and other investment professionals know her. Some went to school with her; others grew up in the same neighbourhood.
Yet Prime Collective Investments also offers the other thing an increasingly outward-looking Botswana wants: international connection. Its wider group presence, including South Africa, Mauritius and Guernsey, provides access to markets, expertise and networks beyond Botswana.
Kobue sees no contradiction between the two. “As a citizen, I want local assets invested locally and local companies to benefit,” she says. “But as a representative of an investment company looking after investors, I also want that association with a larger international group because I know what that can mean in terms of opportunities for our investors.”
That balance may say something about Botswana itself. The country experienced another significant change in 2024, when elections produced its first transfer of power to an opposition party since independence. But the more interesting change – at least in Kobue’s telling – is cultural: a younger, more connected generation is questioning assumptions and looking beyond the industries and career paths that shaped their parents.
“We are still developing; we are not really there yet,” she says. “But the development path that we are on is really visible now. There are a lot of opportunities.”
Diamonds gave Botswana an extraordinary foundation. Their weakening is undeniably painful. But the disruption is also forcing a country that became accustomed to certainty to stretch, innovate and look around.
And what Botswana is beginning to see is that there is a much bigger world of opportunity beyond diamonds.
