These Are Our Diamonds: For most citizens, ODC’s creation was deemed natural, appropriate, and long overdue. The national feel good factor based on a patriotic sentiment and the knowledge that ‘these are our diamonds’ found resonance among Botswana’s politicians, civil society, academia, and the person on the street who said, ‘it’s about time.’ But noone quantified the economic impact that the company was expected to make or set standards for how it would be assessed because the sentiment alone seemed adequate and the rationale self-evident. For observers of regional policy in natural resources, it was familiar trend. In Algeria they said this is our gas, in Ghana this is our gold, this is our oil they say in Nigeria, this is our copper in Zambia and this is our lithium in Zimbabwe. It was a no-brainer and perhaps raising the question of whether public sentiment was an appropriate substitute for a policy and strategy risked a fall out. So, most went along. But students of mineral economics, governance and a policy analysts would nevertheless have wondered whether a mere sense of ownership would suffice developmentally .
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