Word: botswana
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...Daddy has several reasons for wanting to settle the matter quickly. The summit meeting of the 43-nation Organization of African Unity is scheduled to be held next month in Kampala, and Amin, as the host, desperately wants it to be a success. Last week the government of Botswana announced that it would boycott the Kampala meeting because of Amin's "disregard for the sanctity of human life." Several other member states, possibly including Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia, may do the same...
...bust-to-boom turnaround in Botswana began in 1967 with the discovery of the world's second largest diamond "pipe," a gem-rich geological formation nearly a mile across. The government's part ownership with De Beers Consolidated Mines, plus tax receipts from diamond exports, earned the country some $25 million last year, but that was only the beginning. Geologists reckon that the pipe may be good for 500 years of mining, and they have discovered a second one 30 miles away whose diamond deposits could be even more profitable...
...diamonds are not Botswana's only friend. Copper and nickel are now being mined in the eastern part of the country and shipped to the U.S. for refining. The mining machinery will soon be powered by Botswana's coal. Mineralogists have found that perhaps 400 billion tons of coal-almost two-thirds of the proven reserves in all of Europe-lie beneath the country's soil. Additional recent copper and nickel discoveries have been labeled "very promising" by representatives of U.S. Steel, and deposits of manganese, asbestos and gypsum have yet to be developed...
...Botswana's growth has proceeded smoothly, largely because of the policies of burly, Oxford-educated President Sir Seretse Khama, 53, a forceful advocate of both multiracial democracy (the population is about 98% black) and a mixed economy. Other black African regimes have leaped to 100% nationalization of foreign interests, but Sir Seretse has limited his government's share of Botswana's mineral income to part ownership of mining operations plus tax revenues. Plenty of profit and incentive remain for foreign investors, chiefly from the U.S. and neighboring South Africa...
This arrangement has been strongly endorsed both by Botswana's voters, who gave Sir Seretse a landslide election victory in his bid for another five-year term last October, and by Western aid programs. Canada has financed a dam in the northeast to store scarce water, and the U.S. has loaned $16 million for the building of a 200-mile all-weather road to Botswana's northern border. Britain, Sweden, Norway and the United Nations have committed $31 million in grants and loans, mostly for manpower training and rural development...