Despite ongoing economic challenges stemming from the rise of lab-grown diamonds – considering Botswana was a major miner of natural diamonds – and depressed global diamond demand, professional services provider Deloitte Africa reports that Botswana still has the potential to capitalise on its ranking as a favourable mining and investment destination.

Botswana has ranked first in Africa and seventh globally out of 68 jurisdictions in public policy think tank the Fraser Institute’s yearly 2025 survey of mining companies, reveals Deloitte Africa strategic transformation partner Simon Hirschfeld.

The Fraser Institute’s survey assesses how mineral endowments and public policy factors, such as taxation and regulatory uncertainty, affect exploration.

“What makes Botswana a competitive investment destination is the strength of the political and regulatory ecosystem. It is very stable for investors that look for predictability, stability, enforceability of contracts, rule of law and the low sovereign risk,” explains Hirschfeld.

Taking the ranking from the Fraser Institute into account, he says Botswana remains an attractive investment destination, demonstrating that returns are being realised and that a reasonably fair balance exists between resource nationalisation and investor attractiveness and returns.

Despite Botswana’s economic growth being historically driven by the government investing diamond mining and beneficiation revenues into infrastructure, education and health, rather than by private companies, one of the key pivots has been the shift toward a public-private sector led partnership model, highlights Hirschfeld.

This shift includes an allocation of P1.31-billion in financing for small, medium and micro enterprises, as outlined in the twelfth iteration of Botswana’s National Development plan.

Staying with public-private sector led partnership, he says it is more important to work with and partner with the private sector to enable the government’s objectives and role to create an enabling mining legislation and framework.

However, Hirschfeld says the challenge lies in finding the correct balance between citizen economic empowerment and ensuring that investors are able to generate a reasonable and fair return on the risk capital they invest into Botswana.

The current approach to mineral investments is centred on selective State participation rather than blanket policies across the board, while also encouraging joint ventures instead of wholly-state-owned ventures, he highlights.

Preserving Tourism

While Botswana is globally renowned as a key tourism destination thanks to the Okavango Delta and vast national parks, an expansion of mining activity within the country raises concerns about environmental sustainability and land use, says Hirschfeld.

However, he says there exist multiple mechanisms to ensure a “good balance” of mining can be undertaken in co-existence to fauna and flora conservation, including strict environmental impact assessments needing to be conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Minerals and Energy, Ministry of Lands and Agriculture, and the Department of Environmental Affairs. Licensing is also highly controlled.

In addition to this, Botswana has designated use-specific zones aligned with the National Spatial Planning Policy to delineate land uses between human settlements, economic diversification through Special Economic Zones and ecological conservation.