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This document considers the economic impact of diamonds in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. It states that the many global campaigns to stop trade in conflict diamonds has tended to ignore the benefits of the legitimate industry for these countries. The author describes a study that attempts to verify the claims regarding the positive aspects of the industry. This, it is argues, is important because concern about possible economic damage to these countries has caused NGOs campaigning against conflict diamonds to be less aggressive where consumers are concerned, than might otherwise have been the case.The paper provides some history of the industry in these three Southern African countries. It looks at the development of the trade in Botswana and the the economic benefits accruing to government there. Although these are significant, they do not seem to be significantly filtering down and reducing poverty. The author also points out that Botswana is not diversifying its income generation sufficiently away from diamonds, which are a finite resource. Similar analyses of the history and economics of the industry in Namibia and South Africa are presented.The author concludes that, with the exception of Botswana, diamonds contribute little to total government revenue in the region, and their contribution to employment in all three countries is small and declining. This means that diamonds cannot be identified very directly either with good development or its absence.However, the report defines some reasons for success and future priorities for improving benefits from the diamond industry:through good governance, management and control of supply, Botswana has managed to retain significant income from diamonds while retaining its political stabilitybenefits to local economies must be improvedthese three countries have benefited from the Kimberley process, developing new regulations, although evidence of conflict diamond trade in South Africa has to be better addressedultimately the responsibility for ending conflict diamond trade lies with the industry and with genuine corporate responsibility
