Modern Mining July 2018

COUNTRY FOCUS: BOTSWANA

The incredible Karowe story

Botswana’s Karowe mine has been covered in a number of articles in Modern Mining over the past several years. For a fresh look at the mine, and in particular its astonishing record of large stone production, we publish here an ar- ticle by Michael (Mike) Brook, who is employed as a project manager by Debswana but who has also forged a name for himself as a writer of books on Botswana, including its diamond mining industry and its wildlife.

K arowe is located in northern Bo- tswana, 22 km south-east of the Orapa mine, which was estab- lished in the early 1970s as the nation’s first diamond mine after the kimberlite on which it is based (A/K1) was discovered in 1967. Karowe is wholly owned by Lucara Diamond Corporation and has been a remarkable success story in its first five years of production. Between 1967 and 1976, De Beers discovered a grand total of 79 kimberlites, the host rock for diamonds, in Botswana, 75 of which were in

Kimberlite from Karowe’s South Lobe, which hosts the bulk of the mine’s resource. the Orapa Kimberlite Field (OKF) and eight of which were diamondiferous. This was truly the heyday for De Beers’ exploration in Botswana with this period also seeing the discovery of the kimberlites which later led to the develop- ment of not only Orapa and Karowe but also the Letlhakane, Damtshaa and B/K11 mines. Karowe mine (Karowe means a precious stone in the local Sesarwa language) ranks as

feature

40  MODERN MINING  July 2018