Rachel Bilson who traveled to Botswana and South Africa late last year to learn about diamond mining and the impact it has made in the lives of the people there with the Diamond Information Center, has designed a bracelet, with $20 from each sale going to the non-profit Diamond Empowerment Fund (DEF).
The bracelet, which features [...]

pThe [Botswanan] Governmentrsquo;s position that habitation of the [Kalahari] reserve by the Basarwa and Bakgalagadi communities is incompatible with the reserversquo;s conservation objectives and status appears to be inconsistent with its decision to permit Gem Diamonds/Gope Exploration Company (Pty) Ltd. to conduct mining activities within the reserve, an operation that is planned to last several [...]

Botswana’s diamond mining giant Debswana Diamond Company says it is targeting to produce at least 20 million carats of diamonds which levels to around 60 percent of its normal production in the year 2010.

Moody’s Investors Service has changed the outlook on Botswana’s A2 government bond ratings to negative from stable, reflecting the continued strain on the country’s finances imposed by the global economic crisis.
Moody’s notes that Botswana’s economy was hit especially hard at the beginning of the crisis, when worldwide demand for luxury goods such as diamonds literally [...]

Louis Nchindo, the former Managing Director of Debswana, the Botswana mining venture between De Beers and the Botswana government, has been reported dead, according to South Africa’s Business Report.
Nchindo was due to face criminal charges of over 30 counts this coming April.
Another local paper, The Voice, reports that Interpol officers approached them for Nchindo’s photograph [...]

Namakwa Diamonds Limited has signed a co-operation agreement with B.L.I.D International, the operating company of the Andre Messika Group, a leading diamantiare based in Paris and Tel Aviv.
Andre Messika is a preferred wholesale diamond supplier to internationally recognised jewellery houses, as well as being a wholesale jewellery manufacturer and retailer with numerous outlets in Europe [...]

Survival International, a non-governmental organisation, is holding a protest to highlight ‘Botswana’s continuing persecution of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve’. Although Botswana’s High Court ruled that the Bushmen had been evicted from their ancestral lands in the reserve illegally, the government is trying to make life impossible for those [...]

The dollar value of Debswana’s diamond sales is expected to gradually return to the level achieved in the financial year 2007/08 by 2012/13, says O.K. Matambo, Botswana’s Minister of Finance and Development Planning, in his 2010 Budget Speech, entitled “Transforming our Economy After the Crisis”, which was delivered to the National Assembly on 8th February [...]