Across the board new questions have been asked regarding extractives-led growth in Africa. Considering widespread historical disappointment many have turned to the study Botswana, and its diamond sector, to try and understand what lessons can be learnt to improve future African outcomes. Simultaneously Botswana, and its significant economic growth since independence in 1966, has been an important case-study for many influential scholarly accounts on economic development more broadly (for example Acemoglu et al., 2002; Lange, 2009). Many of these accounts focus on Botswana’s colonial inheritances, highlighting the importance of institutions such as property rights for economic development. However, in part due to consistent challenges around inequality and a lack of structural transformation, increasingly scholars have also argued that the country is not an African outlier and should instead be understood as suffering from the same pathologies and developmental failures long associated with Africa (for example Hillbom, 2012; Hillbom & Bolt, 2018; Jerven, 2010). This presentation argues that both accounts have failed to properly account for economic performance in post-colonial Botswana, providing a qualified defense of Botswana’s post-colonial developmental trajectory, while rejecting simplistic narratives of colonial inheritances. Instead it argues that Botswana’s success was rooted in a post-colonial elite-led political project, built around the Botswana Democratic Party, that saw state-building and development as crucial to political survival in a region characterized by violent white-supremacist political projects. Moreover, based on elite-interviews and to-date unexplored archival material it links this political project to the state’s relationship with the De Beers diamond mining company. This sheds light on one of the most secretive relationships in mining, illustrating how the government skillfully, and consistently, used mining negotiations to improve developmental outcomes. By prioritising conflict with capital, oftentimes seeing the state fight De Beers tooth and nail on a host of issues, and the concessions this conflict won, the presentation also provides a political economy account which explains the contradictions which appear alongside success in post-colonial Botswana. Lastly, it outlines