Botswana, the country with the biggest diamonds, gets an improved 10-year deal with miner De Beers

The Botswana government signed a new diamond sales agreement crucial to its economy with the De Beers mining company on Tuesday after seven years of negotiations. The deal gives the government an increasing share of diamond sales through the Debswana company — its joint venture with De Beers, a subsidiary of Anglo American. Botswana, a sparsely populated and arid country in southern Africa, is the biggest producer of diamonds by value and the second biggest by volume behind Russia.