Mmegi

Nature vs nurture: The battle for the soul of the diamond

Ever shining: Lucara's Karowe Mine regularly unveils major finds PIC: LUCARACORP.COM
Ever shining: Lucara's Karowe Mine regularly unveils major finds PIC: LUCARACORP.COM

One early winter evening in Botswana, a young miner listened as his manager explained that production at the nearby Jwaneng pit would be scaled back for the first time in decades. Simultaneously, on the other side of the globe, a couple in Denver was debating whether to choose an engagement ring set with a natural stone or a synthetic one.

These seemingly unrelated conversations capture the tension defining the diamond industry today, as an ancestral trade built on rarity and romance faces off against an avalanche of easily affordable, laboratory‑grown diamonds (LGDs). The stakes are high, especially in the countries that are reliant on the revenues provided by their natural diamond resources.

A shock to the system

Editor's Comment
Ruling party should tread carefully on cadre deployment

But on the particularly sensitive question of cadre deployment, the BNF must tread very carefully.The issue deserves robust debate, not ideological enthusiasm. Recent public comments from the BNF leadership are reassuring: the party has said that government positions should be based on merit and competence rather than party membership, and that it does not have a specific cadre-deployment policy.That principle should remain firmly at the centre...

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