The Namibian government wants to renegotiate its partnership agreement with diamond producer De Beers Centenary, Information Minister Nangolo Mbumba announced Wednesday. Cabinet appointed a seven-member government task team to look into the current diamond sales agreement with De Beers, he said at the weekly media briefing on Cabinet decisions. The team is to identify areas for improvement, to maximise revenue to the Namibian government, and to recommend other issues of the agreement for renegotiation. They must report to Cabinet at the end of July 2004. The renegotiation is due in 2005 and it was decided to get a better agreement with De Beers than the present one, according to the minister.

In 2002 diamond production in Namibia added 9,5 % to the GDP or N$ 2.99 billion, with 1,7 million carats mined,

The government formed a 50:50 partnership with De Beers in 1994 to reshape the erstwhile CDM, which the Oppenheimer family and Anglo American owned since the early 1920s, into Namdeb. Diamonds were first discovered in the country in 1908. After Germany lost the colony in 1919, CDM gained a virtual lock on all diamond activities in Namibia through the 1923 Halbscheidt Agreement, by which the colonial administration gave CDM the exclusive mining rights for the Sperrgebiet for 50 years, later extended to December 2020. At independence in 1990, the diamond mining rights had to be renegotiated.