A village finds a spring on one family's land. The family has a choice. It can sell the water by the cup and become the richest household for miles. Or it can pipe the spring to every home, and watch the whole village grow. The first choice makes a rich family. The second makes a rich village.
In 1967, a young African country faced that choice with diamonds. What it did next is one of the least told leadership stories on the continent.
A poor country with nothing in the ground
When Botswana became independent from Britain on 30 September 1966, it was rated one of the poorest states in the world. The colonial period had left it some railway line and only about 12 kilometres of paved road. The country had about 40 university graduates, and it was in the grip of a drought that left nearly a fifth of its people on government rations.
Its first president, Sir Seretse Khama, later recalled the "understandable pessimism" about the new nation, which had no evident natural resources on which to build its future.
Seretse was no ordinary politician. He was heir to the chieftaincy of the Bangwato, the largest of the eight nations of Bechuanaland. After he married Ruth Williams, an Englishwoman, in 1948, Britain refused to recognise him and sent him into exile. In 1956 he formally renounced his claim to the chieftaincy so he could return home as a private citizen. He co-founded a political party, and in 1966 he became the first president of Botswana.
Diamonds on Bangwato land
Within months of independence, the ground spoke. In April 1967, a team of De Beers geologists working between Letlhakane and the Mopipi Pan found the kimberlite pipe at Orapa, at 117 hectares the largest of the diamond pipes eventually located in the area. Orapa lies in the Central District, the heartland of the Bangwato.
Under the old arrangements, mineral rights in the tribal territories belonged to the tribes. The Bangwato could have kept the diamonds, and the money, for themselves.
They did not. On 29 September 1967, the eve of Botswana's first independence anniversary, the Mineral Rights in Tribal Territories Act came into force. It transferred to the Republic, "without compensation", the mineral rights of seven tribes: the Bakwena, Bamangwato, Bangwaketse, Batawana, Barolong, Bakgatla and Bamalete. The agreement for the Bamangwato, signed by President Seretse Khama and the tribal authority after consulting the tribe in the customary way, gives the reason in one sentence: "it is just and equitable that such resources should enure to the benefit of all the inhabitants of Botswana and not to the benefit of a section thereof."
The family that found the spring piped it to the whole village.
What the spring built
Orapa was commissioned in 1971. In 1972, geologists found the pipe that became Jwaneng, buried under 40 metres of sand and calcrete, and Debswana, the company that runs the mines, is owned 50:50 by the government and De Beers. When De Beers wanted to expand, the government renegotiated the terms in its favour.
The money was put to work. According to Botswana's own figures, presented at UNCTAD in 2019, primary school enrolment rose from under 25% in 1966 to universal, adult literacy from about 10% to 87%, and the road network grew to more than 18,500 kilometres. Free public health care put more than 90% of people within 15 kilometres of a clinic, and the country reached upper-middle-income status in 2004.
The second act
A spring can run low. Since around 2015, lab-grown diamonds, chemically identical to mined ones, have spread fast through the jewellery market, and the IMF reports that their wholesale prices have fallen by 90% since 2019. In 2024, Botswana's mining output fell 24% and the economy contracted by 3%. The IMF's message is blunt: the country must implement long-postponed diversification reforms.
Botswana is moving. In February 2025 it signed a new deal with De Beers under which the state's Okavango Diamond Company sells 30% of Debswana's output, rising to 40% from 2030, and Debswana's mining licences run to 2054. De Beers also committed BWP 1 billion up front to a Diamonds for Development Fund for growth, diversification and jobs, and a new jewellery manufacturing facility in Botswana.
The lesson for builders
Two lessons sit side by side in this story. The first is about leadership. A tribe, and a man born to lead it, gave up a private fortune so a whole nation could share it. Economists still hold Botswana up as a role model for country success.
The second is about what comes after. Sharing the spring built the nation. Building beyond the spring is what keeps it standing. The same is true of a family business that lives on one product, a factory that depends on one buyer, or a country that exports one raw material. Africa's real wealth is not only what lies underground. It is in what we choose to do with it, and how widely we let it flow.
What "spring" in your business or community could serve everyone, if someone chose to share it?