Botswana's Debswana curbs diamond production as weak demand persists
The global diamond market has experienced a downturn since the second half of 2023, which caused Debswana to cut production by 27% to 17.93 million carats in 2024. Debswana, which accounts for about 90% of Botswana's diamond sales, reported a 46% drop in sales revenues last year.
The company, a 50-50 joint venture between Botswana's government and global giant De Beers, now plans to reduce output to 15 million carats in 2025, it said in a statement.
"Debswana Diamond Company continues to prudently navigate the challenging market conditions, including sustained low demand across the diamond pipeline and emerging pressures such as U.S.-imposed tariffs," it said.
Debswana is temporarily pausing production at Jwaneng Cut 9 and Orapa mines, after suspending operations at its Letlhakane tailing plant and Jwaneng Modular plant in April.
The temporary stoppages are expected to deliver significant cost savings across fuel, electricity, and other production consumables, Debswana added.
Long-term initiatives such as the Jwaneng underground project, to convert Debswana's flagship open pit mine to an underground operation, will continue, but selected capital projects will be slowed down to save costs.
No job involuntary cuts are planned, although the company continues to offer voluntary separation, it added.
Botswana gets 30% of its revenue and 75% of its foreign currency earnings from diamonds and the current market downturn resulted in the economy contracting by 3% in 2024. The International Monetary Fund has forecast a further 0.4% contraction this year.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
What will the AI revolution mean for the global south?
I come from Trinidad and Tobago. As a country that was once colonized by the British, I am wary of the ways that inequalities between the global north and global south risk being perpetuated in the digital age. When we consider the lack of inclusion of the global south in discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), I think about how this translates to an eventual lack of economic leverage and geopolitical engagement in this technology that has captivated academics within the industrialised country I reside, the United States. As a scientist, I experienced an early rite of passage into the world of Silicon Valley, the land of techno-utopianism, and the promise of AI as a net positive for all. But, as an academic attending my first academic AI conference in 2019, I began to notice inconsistencies in the audience to whom the promise of AI was directed. AI researchers can often identify consistent choices for locations where such conferences are hosted, and where they are not. NeurIPS, one of the top AI conferences, has highlighted annual issues for obtaining visas for academic attendees and citizens from the African continent. Attending such a prestigious conference in the field grants one the opportunity to gain access to peers in the field, new collaborations and feedback on one's work. I often hear the word 'democratisation' within the AI community, an implication of equity in access, opportunity and merit for contribution regardless of one's country of origin. Associate professor of economics Fadhel Kaboub talks about how 'a lack of vision for oneself results in being a part of someone else's vision', reflecting on how systematically lacking an access to infrastructure results in local trade deficits in economies. As in the time of Nafta's promise of 'free trade', promises of 'AI democratisation' today still exist and benefit mainly countries with access to tech hubs not located in the global south. While the United States and other industrialized countries dominate in access to computational power and research activity, much of the low-paid manual labour involved in labelling data and the global underclass in artificial intelligence still exists in the global south. Much like coffee, cocoa, bauxite and sugar cane are produced in the global south, exported cheaply and sold at a premium in more industrialized countries, over the past few years we have seen influence in AI inextricably tied to energy consumption. Countries that can afford to consume more energy have more leverage in reinforcing power to shape the future direction of AI and what is considered valuable within the AI academic community. In 2019, Mary L Gray and Siddharth Suri published Ghost Work, which exposed the invisible labour of technology today, and at the beginning of my tenure at graduate school, the heavily cited paper Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence was published. It has been five years since these seminal works. What would an AI community inspired by the Brics organisation, which united major emerging economies to advocate for themselves in a system dominated by western countries, look like for the global south? I often ask myself how AI has contributed to our legacy, and whose stories it won't tell. Has AI mitigated issues of mistrust and corruption in less-resourced countries? Has it benefited our civic communities or narrowed educational gaps between less-resourced regions? How will it make society better, and whose society will it make better? Who will be included in that future? A historical mistrust can impede adoption by developing countries. Furthermore, many developing countries have weak institutional infrastructures, poor or nonexistent laws and regulatory frameworks for data projection and cybersecurity. Therefore, even with an improved information infrastructure, they are likely to function at a disadvantage in the global information marketplace. A currency is only as good as its perceived global trust. When thinking about the democratization in AI and a vision of what it could be in years to come, AI's survival requires including more perspectives from regions such as the global south. Countries from the global south should work together to build their own markets and have a model of sovereignty for their data and data labour. Economic models often consider a definition of development that includes a measure of improvement in the quality of life of the most marginalized of its people. It is my hope that in the future that will extend to our evaluation of AI. Krystal Maughan is a PhD student at the University of Vermont studying differential privacy and machine learning
The Guardian
8 hours ago
- The Guardian
What will the AI revolution mean for the global south?
I come from Trinidad and Tobago. As a country that was once colonized by the British, I am wary of the ways that inequalities between the global north and global south risk being perpetuated in the digital age. When we consider the lack of inclusion of the global south in discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), I think about how this translates to an eventual lack of economic leverage and geopolitical engagement in this technology that has captivated academics within the industrialised country I reside, the United States. As a scientist, I experienced an early rite of passage into the world of Silicon Valley, the land of techno-utopianism, and the promise of AI as a net positive for all. But, as an academic attending my first academic AI conference in 2019, I began to notice inconsistencies in the audience to whom the promise of AI was directed. AI researchers can often identify consistent choices for locations where such conferences are hosted, and where they are not. NeurIPS, one of the top AI conferences, has highlighted annual issues for obtaining visas for academic attendees and citizens from the African continent. Attending such a prestigious conference in the field grants one the opportunity to gain access to peers in the field, new collaborations and feedback on one's work. I often hear the word 'democratisation' within the AI community, an implication of equity in access, opportunity and merit for contribution regardless of one's country of origin. Associate professor of economics Fadhel Kaboub talks about how 'a lack of vision for oneself results in being a part of someone else's vision', reflecting on how systematically lacking an access to infrastructure results in local trade deficits in economies. As in the time of Nafta's promise of 'free trade', promises of 'AI democratisation' today still exist and benefit mainly countries with access to tech hubs not located in the global south. While the United States and other industrialized countries dominate in access to computational power and research activity, much of the low-paid manual labour involved in labelling data and the global underclass in artificial intelligence still exists in the global south. Much like coffee, cocoa, bauxite and sugar cane are produced in the global south, exported cheaply and sold at a premium in more industrialized countries, over the past few years we have seen influence in AI inextricably tied to energy consumption. Countries that can afford to consume more energy have more leverage in reinforcing power to shape the future direction of AI and what is considered valuable within the AI academic community. In 2019, Mary L Gray and Siddharth Suri published Ghost Work, which exposed the invisible labour of technology today, and at the beginning of my tenure at graduate school, the heavily cited paper Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence was published. It has been five years since these seminal works. What would an AI community inspired by the Brics organisation, which united major emerging economies to advocate for themselves in a system dominated by western countries, look like for the global south? I often ask myself how AI has contributed to our legacy, and whose stories it won't tell. Has AI mitigated issues of mistrust and corruption in less-resourced countries? Has it benefited our civic communities or narrowed educational gaps between less-resourced regions? How will it make society better, and whose society will it make better? Who will be included in that future? A historical mistrust can impede adoption by developing countries. Furthermore, many developing countries have weak institutional infrastructures, poor or nonexistent laws and regulatory frameworks for data projection and cybersecurity. Therefore, even with an improved information infrastructure, they are likely to function at a disadvantage in the global information marketplace. A currency is only as good as its perceived global trust. When thinking about the democratization in AI and a vision of what it could be in years to come, AI's survival requires including more perspectives from regions such as the global south. Countries from the global south should work together to build their own markets and have a model of sovereignty for their data and data labour. Economic models often consider a definition of development that includes a measure of improvement in the quality of life of the most marginalized of its people. It is my hope that in the future that will extend to our evaluation of AI. Krystal Maughan is a PhD student at the University of Vermont studying differential privacy and machine learning
BBC News
17 hours ago
- BBC News
Kenyan women and likeability in the workplace: 'I felt an unspoken pressure to smile'
During a meeting at her office in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, 24-year-old Faith suddenly became nervous - reluctant to be perceived as difficult in a part of the world that does not like opinionated young had started pleasantly enough. Faith, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, had dutifully laughed along at the bad jokes made by her then a senior colleague made a suggestion that she felt would not work practically. But before Faith could express her opinion, her colleague mentioned her name."And Faith agrees with me!" The others in the meeting room turned to face her as her colleague added: "You agree, don't you?"Faith did not agree, but felt under pressure: "I didn't want to be seen as difficult or moody."I felt an unspoken pressure to smile, to be agreeable, to not be disruptive," she tells that point she was two years into her first job at a sought-after company and among the first women in her family's generation to go to university - she had so much more she wanted to achieve."How do I progress if I start disagreeing with colleagues at such a junior stage?" she is aware she faces what a Women in the Workplace 2025 report, which focuses on India, Nigeria and Kenya, calls "the broken rung". This refers to a significant barrier on the corporate ladder that has seen a steep drop in women's representation between entry-level and management in May by McKinsey, the management consultancy has for the first time expanded its annual research beyond North America and found that in these three big developing economies, women remain significantly underrepresented in senior leadership Kenya, women make up 50% of entry-level roles in sectors such as healthcare and financial services, but that drops to just 26% at senior levels. The pattern is similar in Nigeria and did not challenge her colleague in the meeting. She smiled and said nothing. There is now a term for her experience - experts call it "likeability labour"."[This] is a really fun name for an incredibly depressing reality," says Amy Kean, a sociologist and head of the communications consultancy Good Shout, which coined the term."It refers to the constant second-guessing, overthinking, paranoia, shape-shifting and masking women do every single day in order to be liked in the workplace."Ms Kean's UK-based study - Shapeshifters: What We Do to Be Liked at Work - which also came out in May, states that 56% of women feel pressure to be likeable at work, compared to just 36% of on a survey of 1,000 women across the UK, the report also highlights how deeply ingrained, and unequally distributed, the burden of likeability is in professional details how women often feel the need to soften their speech using minimising language, even when confident in their phrases include: "Does that make sense?" or "Sorry, just quickly..."This kind of constant self-editing, Ms Kean explains, may act as a defence mechanism to avoid being seen as abrasive or overly assertive."There is also a class element to this," she adds, in reference to the UK. "Working-class women, who are less used to modulating themselves in different settings, also get accused of being direct and also suffer in the corporate world."For many women who are not used to advocating for themselves in their personal environments, the stakes go beyond fitting in or being well-liked."It's not as simple as being popular, it's about being safe, heard and taken seriously," Ms Kean this year, she organised a summit in London for women feeling the likeability labour pressure, titled Unlikeable Woman. More than 300 women turned up to share their UK study is not an outlier. Sociologists say the pressure women feel to be likeable in order to advance professionally is a global trend. A 2024 study by the US-based recruitment firm Textio supports this. Analysing data from 25,000 individuals across 253 organisations, it found that women were much more likely to receive personality-based feedback and that 56% of women had been labelled "unlikeable" in performance reviews, a critique only 16% of men on the other hand, were four times more likely than other genders to be positively labelled as "likeable"."Women perform likeability labour for a mix of social and cultural reasons," says Dr Gladys Nyachieo, a sociologist and senior lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya."Women are generally socialised to be caregivers, to serve and to put the needs of others before themselves and this invariably transfers to the workplace," says Dr Nyachieo."There is a term for it in Kiswahili - 'office mathe' - or the office mother."The office mathe does additional labour to keep a workplace functioning, including making tea, buying snacks and generally being of service. I ask what is wrong with this if that is what a woman wants to do."There's nothing wrong with it," Dr Nyachieo says. "But you won't get paid for it. You will still be expected to do your work, and possibly additional work."Dr Nyachieo believes that in order to tackle likeability labour, systemic change has to happen at the root, including implementing policies that allow women flexible hours and have mentors that advocate for herself mentors several young women just starting out in Kenya's workforces."I take mentoring young women very seriously," Dr Nyachieo says. "I tell them: 'If you act pleasantly all the time, you will go nowhere. You have to negotiate for yourself'."One of her mentees is Faith."She's taught me not to feel pressure to be smiley and nice all the time," Faith says."I am working on it." You may also be interested in: The Kenyans saying no to motherhood and yes to sterilisationKenya femicide: Why men fail to condemn deadly misogynyWangari Maathai - death of a visionaryKenya's Thandiwe Muriu: Standing out in camouflageNew faces of protest - Kenya's Gen Z anti-tax revolutionaries Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
