What have been the main developments at Debswana over the past year? 

Debswana has embarked on a long-term strategy with a five-years step change dubbed Debswana Strategy 2024 and themed “One Dream, One Team”. At the center of this strategy is an intention to deliver on our purpose to “Make Life Brilliant”. The latter refers to making life brilliant for all stakeholders, shareholders, employees, partners, and communities. It is a purpose that is aligned to both De Beers and the government of Botswana’s long-term ambitions. During 2021, the business continued to deliver on its strategic goals, while at the same ensuring the lives of our employees and communities are protected. 

The two paths to value delivery at Debswana are optimisation in the short to medium term and reimagining of mining through Future Smart Connected Mines (FSCM) in the long term. The business continued to deliver on its key focus areas in 2022, journeying towards the achievement of our Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG), people transformation, digital transformation and successful design and implementation of our future project, among others. Our optimization journey proved critical during the recent geopolitical and economic challenges (supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures).

How is the diamond industry recovering post-pandemic? 

The diamond industry’s recovery has been positive, with 2022 starting strong and building on 2021’s positive momentum. The positive market at the beginning of they year was mainly due to restocking post the record holiday season for diamond jewellery sales. This was led by the US market. While the sentiments have been positive, there are uncertainties emanating from the Russia-Ukraine war which has subsequently impacted the economic stability of key diamond markets. It is unclear at this stage what impact the inflationary pressures will have on consumer demand.

Could you explain how do you note investment sentiment in diamond assets? 

Diamonds remain strong as an option for investment. The continued prospecting activities and investments by industry players indicate the appetite and confidence for returns. The current trend of rare discoveries has also created great excitement in the market, leading to record value purchases. Furthermore, the industry is committed to ensuring that governance and ethics are upheld for both the sustainability as well as the global supply chain best practice aspects of the business.

How is Debswana exercising better control and transparency over the supply chain? Can you tell us more about the Sap Ariba project?

In today’s volatile and uncertain world, companies run complex processes and systems to heighten their governance controls and minimize threats to business continuity. Therefore, supply chain being at the center of Debswana spend landscape is not immune to these control challenges. It is therefore not surprising to see growth in the use of technology in our supply chain function, which culminated in the current deployment of Ariba cloud solution. Ariba is meant to mitigate and remediate control gaps identified in our business processes, over and above increasing process efficiencies and visibility, which ultimately touch on the bottom line. Ariba is an online platform which enhances collaboration between service providers. It automates mundane manual processes to release staff to do value adding activates such as forging partnership with strategic vendors. We are deploying the following Ariba Functionalities: Supplier Lifecycle & Performance, which is an online supplier registration; Strategic Sourcing (Tendering tool); Contract Management (contracting tool); Ariba Buying (Tactical sourcing tool); Commerce Automation (Procurement communication tool);  Supply Chain Collaboration (Collaboration document sharing tool).

What are your priorities for 2023?

2023 is the penultimate year for the delivery of the current Debswana’s Strategy step change (Debswana Strategy 2024). This year will be the year for ramping up execution while at the same time accelerating the beyond 2024 plans. Debswana’s key focus areas will include delivering on the set Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG), continued journey on our digital transformation, people transformation, efficiency and productivity improvement, delivery on life extension brownfields project and implementation of our “building forever” program. The “building forever” program includes, among others, delivering on employee health and safety, carbon neutrality, empowering communities.

Do you have a final message?

Adherence to governance and ethics, the safety and health of employees and the aim for carbon neutrality will be key amongst the business priorities going forward.