Orapa

Town in the central Kalahari Desert, Botswana; population (1991) 8,800. The nearby Orapa diamond mine, with production at over 6 million carats a year, is the second-largest diamond mine in Botswana.

In 1967 Orapa was the site of the fourth diamond-bearing pipe (a column of igneous rock, originally an eruption of molten volcanic lava, which may contain diamonds) to be discovered in Africa; mining began in 1971.