Content creation is booming in Botswana but monetisation remains a puzzle

With a youth unemployment charge of 38%, younger Batswana are turning to content material creation to create employment for themselves and their fellow residents.

For Marang Selolwane, a Gaborone-based content material creator with over 275,000 followers throughout Facebook and Instagram, her work goes past the confines of the definition of “content creation.” This ethos has seen Marang rating offers with a few of Botswana’s main corporates, together with telcos, business banks, and insurance coverage firms. “I consider myself a connector or a storyteller. My partnerships are with corporates because my brand ethos is simplifying complex services for everyday Motswana,” she advised TechCabal over a name.

Despite having probably the most costly web prices on the continent, content material creation and consumption in Botswana has boomed in the previous couple of years. Fuelled by a youthful inhabitants with an insatiable urge for food for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, content material creators like Marang have carved out a area of interest by creating content material for an viewers that is all the time hungry for extra.

Maatla Ephraim Basha, a content material creator with over 700,000 subscribers throughout his YouTube and Facebook pages, says he’s typically shocked in regards to the extent of his attain. “When I do nationwide tours with some brands, we visit remote villages which I never even knew existed. I often think no one knows me here, but I see young and old people reenacting some of my skits when we get there. That shows me how much content in Botswana is appreciated and relatable to our people,” he advised TechCabal.

Going past social media

Although content material creators have loved exponential viewers progress, monetisation is nonetheless a wrestle. Triccs is an award-winning comic who began creating skits on his social media pages. Despite having over 43,000 followers on his Facebook web page, he couldn’t monetise that viewers, resulting in him exploring different routes. “Most platforms like Facebook and YouTube don’t have monetisation options for Botswana-based content creators because of our small population. So even if you have a lot of followers who engage with your content, you still cannot directly monetise it on the platforms.”

According to Triccs, working with corporates as a substitute for immediately monetising his viewers on social platforms has limitations. The fundamental limitation is the tendency of company advertising to not give creators sufficient room to guide content material ideation. “Most corporates don’t use the creatives for their creativity but for their numbers. In my opinion, that is killing the game because, as a creator, I have to do subpar content which was ideated by the corporate’s marketing team without much input from me. That then affects my brand because the audience will associate that work with me,” he added.

This level is additional reiterated by Selowane, who notes with concern that for a vital variety of corporates in the nation, advertising campaigns are accomplished by employees in head workplaces often primarily based in South Africa. These departments, she provides, typically don’t have the context to know the sort of content material that resonates with a Botswana viewers.

“Sometimes you find that local marketing departments have very little say in deciding the type of content that local content creators will provide. As a creator, you have to work directly with the head office in a different country, mostly South Africa, which limits your ability to create genuine content that you know will appeal to your Botswana audience,” she mentioned.

Despite that problem, she provides that it is important as a creator to remain true to your voice and model as a result of that is what your viewers is following you for. Straying from that to shut an endorsement deal will seemingly alienate them in the long term and reduce their degree of engagement together with your content material.

Basha expounds on the priority across the pattern of not-so-good content material getting choice for endorsements over well-thought-out content material. “I think it’s just about the shock factor and not necessarily good content nowadays. Sometimes you get people who “blow up” on social media as a result of they are saying and do wild issues, and out of the blue, they’re throughout model endorsements. I’m all the time pleased for individuals to get their cash from manufacturers, but it paints a unhealthy image in regards to the total state of content material creation in the nation,” he added.

A startup providing monetisation options to creators

Aurora Media Group is a multimedia streaming platform whose mandate is to “allow Africans to have a platform in which they can put their content out there without the constraints imposed by most content distribution companies.” According to co-founder Moagi Onkabetse, present content material distribution and monetisation fashions take a lot from the creators with out providing a lot in return, and Aurora desires to disrupt that mannequin.

“With Aurora Television, our video-on-demand and live TV platform, creators can submit their content in two categories, either as a finished product you licence to us, and we share dividends through that product’s lifetime. Alternatively, we allow people to submit their scripts, and we facilitate the production, marketing and distribution,” Onkabetse advised TechCabal. 

According to him, curiosity in the platform from Botswana creators has been vital, with over 400 submissions acquired after the product’s launch in May 2023. Numerous licensing offers have been struck from these submissions, and a couple are nonetheless in the negotiation section. Onkabetse provides that regardless of restricted budgets, the submissions they’ve acquired have been good, exhibiting the potential that content material creators in Botswana have. 

“In my opinion, the talent in this country in content creation is immense. If these creators were to be given the right distribution and monetisation opportunities as well as the right funding to take on larger projects, they could contribute significantly to this country’s export mandate. I say this because Botswana content is unique and can appeal to a wider continental and even global audience,” he added.

Still a lot of labor to be accomplished

According to Masego Mohwasa, award-winning director and founding father of 27 Pictures, a manufacturing home whose product choices embody quick movies, TV exhibits and commercials, there is additionally a lot of labor that creators must do to make themselves engaging to potential monetisation channels. She cites the dearth of environment friendly advertising as one of many areas to be addressed by content material creators.

“As content creators, we fall short of marketing our content. We don’t feel the need to create marketing budgets, and marketing is a big part of content creation, if not the most important. If you don’t get your content out there, no one will see it,” she advised TechCabal.

Mohwasa provides that with the right advertising, help for native content material creators corresponding to filmmakers is obvious. “In instances where people have marketed their content properly, support has been there. New Capitol Cinemas, for example, have been huge supporters of local content, and every time they have been asked, they have given room to local producers to premiere their content, in which case the cinemas fill up. So there’s no doubt that when people know about the content, they will come out to support it.” 

Despite content material being picked up by cinemas and UPICtv, the government-owned video-on-demand streaming platform which has proven nearly all of native content material, Mohwasa concedes that in phrases of monetisation, there is nonetheless a lengthy solution to go earlier than creators can maintain themselves by means of their work. “Just because we have limited platforms to distribute content means limited monetisation opportunities. There is a market for tourism content, for example, but there are so many creators. That’s why a lot of creators end up in the corporate space. It’s always not by choice but by necessity. They end up there because they realize there are no monetisation opportunities in other channels,” she added.

Addressing the challenges

From conversations with content material creators and different stakeholders in Botswana, it is clear that the business faces existential challenges. Selolwane believes that construction in the business as a complete can go a great distance in serving to creators flip their work into sustainable technique of incomes a residing. For the sector she believes expertise businesses are very important in an business the place typically creators must spend extra time chasing funds for work accomplished than really doing work.

“I would love for us to have talent agencies that are the middlemen between the corporate, marketing agency, and the content creator themselves. Before I had a manager, I had to handle creating content, making bookings, chasing invoices etc. But with a manager, I can focus more on my content and let my manager handle all the other admin, which has been very helpful,” she mentioned.

She additionally states the significance of different peripheral providers, like legal professionals and accountants, in serving to content material creators construct resilient enterprise fashions that may face up to the challenges of being in the inventive business.

“It is important to have a lawyer because lawyers will sift through the legal agreements and ensure that what you sign for is what you get. Otherwise, you may be in a position where you don’t own the content you created. Now the content is being used on billboards, radio, TV, etc., but you only get paid for only one of those platforms. Accountants are vital because you have to keep track of where money is coming and where it’s going so that you don’t end up without funds for projects because you misused funds, ” she tells TechCabal.

Mohwasa believes that a well-structured business can go a great distance in serving to creators not solely discount higher each with non-public sector and public sector stakeholders but additionally develop the business in normal in order that future creators have significantly better circumstances.

“I think we just need to get organised to help facilitate structure in the industry. Once the structure is there and the value chain is properly defined, we will be better positioned to harness value. Right now, we’re in a situation where everybody is just scrambling for whatever little opportunity is there, which is not sustainable in the long run,” she mentioned.

For his half, Basha believes that fixing the distribution bottleneck is key to unlocking the business’s worth. He thinks by means of platforms like UPICtv permitting creators to pitch pilots as an alternative of full-scale productions after which serving to to fund the exhibits if they’re picked up, creators can reap vital worth from their work.

“Most of us want to see our content on these platforms, but we simply do not have the means to fund production. Unfortunately, the stuff I put on my YouTube and Facebook is below the expected quality of those expected by a streaming platform. If I’m allowed to pitch a sample and the platform like it, they can fund the full production, and we can talk about a revenue split model,” he mentioned.

With a platform like Aurora providing exactly that sort of enterprise mannequin, regardless of the business’s challenges, the indicators are encouraging about the way forward for content material creation and monetisation in Botswana. 

In a nation the place the present youth unemployment charge stands at 38%, content material creation seems to be a viable avenue to assist carry down these figures. Not solely does it attraction to younger individuals, each from the creation and consumption sides, but if its worth chain is nicely developed, it might open up different employment avenues. But earlier than that may be realised, bottlenecks throughout the business, together with in manufacturing, advertising, distribution and monetisation, have to be addressed.

Creators like Selolwane, who now has a small workforce, are proof of the idea of the employment creation worth that may come from a well-supported content material creation business. The query that now remains is, does the stakeholders in the business, together with creators, corporates and authorities, have the willingness to work collectively to handle the hindrances which are limiting the business from reaching its full potential? Only time will inform.