Botswana’s President has clinched multiple agreements with Oman, including on mineral exploration, oil storage infrastructure and renewable \u200cpower, during a visit to the Gulf nation designed to strengthen economic ties, the Presidency said this Monday.<\/p>\n
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Botswana has been seeking to engage Gulf states as part of its strategy to diversify beyond diamond mining and into critical minerals such as copper, gold, graphite, and iron ore.<\/p>\n
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President Duma Boko, who is on a three-day visit, presided over \u2060the signing of deals with the Sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq, the presidency said.<\/p>\n
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They included a joint mineral exploration deal under which Botswana will seek to increase mining exploration, targeting unexplored areas covering roughly 70% of its territory.<\/p>\n
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Revenue from diamond sales, which typically account for about a third of Botswana’s national revenue, has fallen as the global diamond market has been weakened by economic uncertainty and the rise in popularity of lab-grown stones.<\/p>\n
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SOLAR POWER PLANT WITH MINIMUM 25-YEAR LIFE<\/p>\n
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Another deal was for the development of a 500-megawatt solar power plant that \u200cfollows \u2060on from an announcement on March 20 that NAQAA Sustainable Energy LLC, a subsidiary of Oman’s state-owned O-Green, had been selected to design, finance, construct, and operate the plant in northwest Botswana.<\/p>\n
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It will have a minimum operational life of 25 years as Botswana seeks to increase the contribution of renewable \u2060energy in its power supply from 8% now to 50% by 2030.<\/p>\n
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The presidency’s statement said the plant would position Botswana “to secure its energy future and unlock long-term economic value”.<\/p>\n
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It did not provide any financial \u2060details.<\/p>\n
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State-owned Botswana Oil Limited also signed a joint development agreement with Oman’s energy investment company, OQ S.A.O.C to build oil storage infrastructure in Walvis Bay, Namibia, and in Botswana.<\/p>\n
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Oman \u2060is also trying to diversify its economy, which is dependent on oil, although its revenues have increased as a result of the oil price surge linked to the Middle Eastern conflict that began at the end of February.<\/p>\n
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–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":29254,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-31750","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Botswana's President has clinched multiple agreements with Oman","published_date":"2026-04-13 18:29:49","news_description":"Botswana's President has clinched multiple agreements with Oman","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31751,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31750\/revisions\/31751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=31750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}