Orapa is a

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

located in the Central District of

Botswana Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the sou ...

. It is the site of the Orapa diamond mine, the largest

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...

-producing mine in the world, and is considered to be the diamond capital of the country. Nearby is another

kimberlite Kimberlite is an igneous rock and a rare variant of peridotite. It is most commonly known as the main host matrix for diamonds. It is named after the town of Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley in South Africa, where the discovery of an 83.5-Car ...

mine owned by Lucara Diamond, thought to have very large reserves of diamonds. The town has four schools, one of which teaches in English, serving a community containing a high proportion of immigrants. The population in 1996 was approximately 10,000 which increased in the next 10 years and is still increasing due to mining output in line with development targets.Central Statistics Office, Republic of Botswana
/ref> According to the 2022 Population and Household census, the population of Orapa stood at 8,648.

References

Populated places in the Central District (Botswana) Mining communities in Africa {{Botswana-geo-stub

See also

References