Botswana hosts one of the best regulated and strongest performing mining sectors in Africa, with diamonds the main commodity. Botswana's mining industry also deals in other metals and minerals including copper, nickel and coal. Additionally, uranium mining is likely to take off over the next decade.

We maintain a positive outlook for Botswana's mining sector over our forecast period to 2017. Diamond output will remain the mainstay of Botswana's mining production. We forecast modest growth for the diamond sector, boosted by new projects planned by Debswana, Gem Diamonds and Lucara Diamond Corp. However, the major driver of growth will be acceleration in the country's coal production. Botswana's mining sector is on course for steady growth over the next few years as we forecast the sector to average 3.7% growth from 2012 to 2017, reaching a value of US$6.13bn by 2017.