Namibia is one of the large diamond producing countries. However, most of the value-added diamond products in the global value chain are produced abroad. To increase the national share in the diamond value chain, the Namibian government, in conjunction with De Beers, in 2007 initiated a ‘diamond beneficiation programme’. The main purpose of the diamond beneficiation programme is to get Namibia’s rough diamonds made available for cutting and polishing locally by the diamond manufacturing factories, adding value to them before export. The intended benefits for Namibia from such an approach are job creation, development of diamond polishing skills and the development of a sustainable diamond cutting and polishing industry. Since the policy initiative for establishing a diamond manufacturing industry was done, there has been no policy evaluation to establish the extent to which it has progressed. Therefore, there is a knowledge gap around the level of progress in the development of the diamond cutting industry in the Namibian economy. The question that prompted the need for the study was; “to what extent has the Namibian diamond beneficiation programme been successful, and how can this relative success be explained?”

This study adopted a qualitative evaluative case study approach to determine the performance of the diamond cutting and polishing industry towards diamond beneficiation. The study was done through the literature review as a secondary study and the primary data collection through interviews with various stakeholders of the diamond industry in Namibia and in the neighbouring Botswana and South Africa. A sample of 31 interviewees was drawn from diamond industry stakeholders in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa using the nonprobability purposive sampling method. The data collected was analysed qualitatively using the thematic technique. The results and findings of the study reveal that the beneficiation programme in Namibia has made some considerable gains and strides, but more can be done through removal of obstacles and constraints. In comparison and benchmarking, results showed that Botswana leads in terms of the number of Sightholders and employment statistics, followed by Namibia, with South Africa being the least. The challenges affecting beneficiation in Namibia are counter-production tripartite security policy and expensive labour costs of production. Following the identified challenges to beneficiation, it is recommended that Namibia must develop comprehensive legislations and policies that are directly focussed on diamond beneficiation, such as the Diamond Beneficiation Policy with
clear objectives and targets on beneficiation. Furthermore, Namibia must revisit current legislations and policies, and analyse them to assess counter-beneficiation clauses and revise them. Finally, more focussed further studies are recommended on barriers to meaningful value addition and beneficiation in the diamond industry in Namibia for the purpose of developing and identifying new strategies to reduce barriers to value addition and beneficiation.