Safdico Awarded Presidential Honour
| Monday October 13, 2014 15:49
During the recent 48th Botswana Independence Day Celebrations, Safdico Botswana, a blue chip diamond company was awarded “The Presidential Order of Meritorious Services (PMS)”, an honour awarded to any person for actions or services benefiting Botswana or any community or organisation in any particular field or sphere and for acts of courage or devotion to duty.
President Khama bestowed the awards to 25 outstanding women and men, including two organisations for their varied contributions to the nation. Safdico Botswana was one of the two organisations. “I am humbled by the recognition and feel incredibly excited to be part of a company with such great repute and that continues to execute projects that addresses the need for Botswana’s diamond industry through the expansion of the Diamond Technology Park (DTP).
“I credit this award to Safdico Botswana’s success in leveraging off the Safdico International Group business model to build competency, technology and skills to polish top end diamonds in Botswana and establish a state-of-the-art Diamond Centre.
We commit to ensure that our people continue to grow as best assets by global standards to execute Safdico’ strategies that supports Botswana,” he said.
Safdico Botswana was honoured for making a crucial contribution to Botswana by taking the initiative of establishing the Diamond Technology Park (DTP) in 2008 as a diamond centre which later become a critical component to the success of the relocation of De Beers Global Sales from London to Gaborone in November 2013.
The diamond relocation has resulted in further growth of the diamond industry and demand for more office space. According to Moses, the DTP has responded by expanding further with “Building 4”, a 4,000 square metres of lettable office space and scheduled for completion by the end of 2014 with majority of its space already pre-let to industry leaders.
Safdico Botswana says it has always anticipated the diamond industry growth and responded with new developments to satisfy demand for increased office and manufacturing space.
The Diamond Technology Park was planned and built in a phased development in line with the growth of Botswana diamond industry. The first phase (building 1 “the Courtyard” and 2 “the Atrium”) was developed as Industrial Buildings and Office to accommodate downstream diamond businesses.
As Botswana moved further downstream, in 2012 DTP expanded into its second faze with the development of building 3 “the Bourse” that houses prolific tender houses and additional office space.
“The tender facilities has provided a comprehensive solution to encourage diamond tenders to take place in Botswana and facilitated the development of a dynamic secondary dealing industry,” she added.
The DTP attracts Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by encouraging diamond companies from both local and international markets including support services to participate in Botswana.