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As Anglo offloads De Beers, African governments face an uncomfortable question: Is owning a piece of a declining industry actually a prize? When your deputy prime minister opens negotiations by saying “to be honest, the diamond industry is going down,” you’re probably not dealing from a position of desperate enthusiasm.
Namibia’s Natangwe Ithete has become the rare government minister willing to say the quiet part loud: De Beers, the storied diamond giant now on Anglo American’s chopping block, might not be the strategic asset it once appeared to be. And Windhoek isn’t rushing to find out.
Anglo American’s decision to offload De Beers reads less like opportunity and more like managed retreat. The parent company, pivoting hard towards copper and iron ore, metals with clearer demand trajectories in an electrifying global economy valued De Beers at roughly £3.9 billion. That figure comes after recording £2.8 billion in impairments over two years, the accounting equivalent of admitting you drastically overpaid for something.
Current market pressures suggest even that diminished valuation might prove optimistic. When at least six prospective investors have kicked the tyres by June without deals materialising and Angola’s state diamond company Endiama only bid for a minority stake in September, the market is sending signals.
The fundamentals explain the hesitation. Lab-grown diamonds have decimated pricing for smaller stones whilst simultaneously eroding the scarcity narrative that justified natural diamond premiums. Weak demand from key markets, particularly China, compounds the pressure. De Beers’ 2024 output tells the story of production drops, margins compress, and the industry faces structural headwinds rather than cyclical wobbles.
Namibia already owns 50% of Namdeb Holdings, the joint venture with De Beers that produced 2.2 million carats in 2024 about 9% of De Beers’ group output. So the country isn’t exactly unfamiliar with diamond economics. That existing exposure makes Ithete’s caution particularly telling. This isn’t an outsider declining to enter the industry, it’s an insider questioning whether deeper involvement makes sense.
“This is something we need to study very carefully, to determine whether it is worth pursuing or not,” Ithete told The Brief, deploying the diplomatic language of someone trying not to say “this looks like a terrible investment” whilst keeping options theoretically open.
Angola’s push for “broad ownership structure” involving Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia, the African countries where De Beers operates has a certain elegant logic. Shared ownership amongst host nations could theoretically align interests and ensure benefits flow to diamond-producing countries rather than distant shareholders.
But there’s a counterargument: Do you really want to collectively own a larger share of an industry facing “pressure from so-called lab diamonds” and sliding demand? Resource nationalism works brilliantly when the resource maintains value. When the asset is depreciating, collective ownership just spreads the losses across more national balance sheets.
Neighbouring Botswana, which holds a 15% stake in De Beers, is pursuing a controlling interest, a markedly different posture from Namibia’s “let’s study this carefully” stance. The divergence reflects different dependencies. Diamonds constitute a far larger share of Botswana’s economy and export revenues. For Gaborone, securing control of De Beers isn’t purely financial calculation, it’s about protecting economic infrastructure the country has built around diamond revenues for decades.
Namibia enjoys more diversified mineral exports and perhaps more room to be selective. When your deputy prime minister doubles as mines minister and openly questions an industry’s trajectory, that’s the sound of a government deciding it has better places to deploy scarce capital.
Anglo American’s proposed merger with Canada’s Teck Resources to create a copper heavyweight, announced on 9 September, signals where mining executives believe value lies in coming decades. Copper for electrification, iron ore for steel, commodities with clear demand drivers in infrastructure and energy transition. Diamonds, meanwhile, sit uncomfortably in portfolios, generating neither the returns of battery metals nor the stability of bulk commodities.
For African governments eyeing De Beers stakes, the question isn’t just price, it’s whether ownership delivers strategic value beyond financial returns. Does controlling more of the diamond value chain matter if the chain itself is contracting? Ithete’s carefully worded scepticism suggests Namibia’s answer might be no. That’s either prudent financial management or a missed opportunity to secure ownership of a storied company at distressed valuations before an inevitable recovery.
The trouble is, nobody seems particularly confident about which scenario they’re actually facing. And when buying major industrial assets, “nobody’s quite sure” isn’t typically the foundation for bold acquisitions.
Namibia will study it carefully which means expect a polite decline, delivered slowly.
