Angola is pressing ahead with negotiations to acquire a 20% to 30% stake in De Beers, with Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo insisting the country wants a shareholding large enough to secure board representation and meaningfully influence the diamond giant’s strategic direction.
Azevedo made the remarks on Wednesday at a Doing Business Angola conference in Lisbon, telling an audience that Luanda is seeking an ownership position that would enable it “to sit at the table,” help shape corporate strategy and participate in executive-level deliberations — comments reported by Bloomberg.
Fellow Southern African nation Botswana has held a 15% interest in De Beers for decades, a stake rooted in the country’s foundational partnership with the company. A combined Angolan and Batswanan holding in the 35% to 45% range would create a formidable African producer-nation bloc capable of steering strategic decisions, even without holding legal majority control.
Angola had earlier this year reaffirmed its interest in De Beers as it reviewed the health of its diamond sector following a sharp fall in sales. The country confirmed it was targeting a 20% to 30% stake in the diamond unit that Anglo American has put up for sale as part of a broader strategic pivot toward copper.
The government also laid out plans to scale national diamond output to 17 million carats by 2027, through state-owned miner Endiama. According to a government document circulated at the 2025 Africa Mining Indaba in Cape Town, Endiama produced 14 million carats of rough diamonds in 2024 — the highest volume in the company’s history.
That record output cemented Angola’s position as the world’s third-largest diamond producer by volume, behind only Russia and Botswana.
Angola had initially adopted a more aggressive posture. In October of the previous year, the country submitted a bid for a majority stake in De Beers, but has since recalibrated its position, citing market risk.
“Taking the majority stake within luxury commodities is very dangerous because it depends on the market,” Paulo Tanganha, Angola’s national director of mineral resources, told Reuters. “So to de-risk that, we have to have a portion that is sustainable for our economy. And that range is between 20% and 30%, we are happy about that.”
The recalibration comes against a backdrop of deteriorating conditions in the global diamond market, which have weighed on De Beers and prompted difficult operational decisions across its portfolio.
De Beers recently announced a suspension of operations at the Venetia mine in South Africa, the country’s largest diamond mine. The decision was driven directly by the adverse market environment, which has made sustained production economically unviable in the near term.
The company intends to halt mining activity at Venetia for two years, leaving a significant operational gap at a site that employs more than 3,500 people.
To preserve cash during the suspension, De Beers also plans to reduce capital expenditure at the mine. Venetia accounts for approximately 10% of De Beers’ global diamond output and contributes around 40% of South Africa’s total annual diamond production.
The Venetia suspension underscores the broader challenges confronting the diamond industry, which has grappled with weak consumer demand, an oversupply of laboratory-grown stones and subdued prices over the past two years.
Anglo American, meanwhile, is proceeding with the divestiture of De Beers as it seeks to sharpen its focus on copper — a metal central to the global energy transition and in high demand from battery and infrastructure sectors.
The sale process has drawn interest from several parties, with Angola emerging as one of the most prominent prospective investors given its status as a major producer nation and its stated ambition to expand Endiama’s role in the global diamond value chain.
Angola’s interest in De Beers reflects a wider strategic objective: to move beyond raw production and secure a position further up the diamond pipeline, gaining access to pricing, marketing and distribution decisions that have historically been concentrated among mining majors and trading houses.
A board seat at De Beers would give Angola direct visibility into how producer-nation relationships are structured — a particularly sensitive issue as rough diamond markets undergo structural change and producing countries push for greater value retention.
Botswana’s long-standing stake in De Beers has served as a model for how a diamond-dependent economy can leverage its resource endowment into institutional influence. Angola appears to be pursuing a similar logic, albeit from a position of rapidly rising output rather than decades of entrenched partnership.
Whether Angola’s bid ultimately succeeds will depend on the terms Anglo American sets for the De Beers sale process and on competing interest from other potential buyers, including financial and strategic investors who have also been monitoring the divestiture.
Source: Business Insider Africa
