Media funding without control: Lessons for Botswana’s draft Media Bill 2025
Kabo Ramasia | Monday June 8, 2026 06:00
The proposed legislation establishes a Media Development Fund that would receive financing from parliamentary appropriations, fines imposed under the Act, and other sources. The Fund would then support media development activities under the administration of the proposed Media Council.
To unpack this, worth noting is that at first glance, the proposal appears timely. This is on the basis that Botswana’s media industry, like many around the world, faces severe economic challenges.
The media decline is characterised by advertising spend that has migrated to digital platforms, shrinking newsrooms and the rising cost of producing quality journalism. Locally, this is evident by newspapers and broadcasters increasingly struggling to sustain public-interest reporting, particularly outside major urban centres. Evidently, the elephant in the room, however, is not whether journalism requires support. The question is whether public funding can strengthen journalism without compromising its independence.
But, lo and behold! The answer is a resounding yes. There is international evidence suggesting that it can.
Contrary to the belief that government funding inevitably leads to state control, some of the world’s strongest and most independent media systems operate alongside substantial public subsidies. For instance, Nordic countries provide perhaps, the clearest example. Sweden has supported newspapers through direct press subsidies since 1971, with the explicit objective of preserving media diversity and ensuring that smaller publications survive alongside dominant media houses.
Today, Sweden continues to provide substantial support to news organisations through various subsidy schemes administered by independent institutions rather than politicians. Thus, decisions on funding allocations are made through structures that include researchers, legal experts, industry representatives, and public-interest stakeholders.
In this regard, the Swedish experience offers an important lesson for Botswana. The success of public funding is determined less by the existence of funding itself and more by who controls the money and how decisions are made.
Similarly, South Africa offers a more directly relevant African example. In this case, the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) was established in 2003 as a partnership between government, civil society, and the private sector. Its mandate is to support community media and expand access to information amongst historically marginalised communities.
As a result, the MDDA was specifically designed to address market failures. It is common cause that community radio stations and small independent publications often serve audiences that are unattractive to advertisers. Therefore, without intervention, these communities risk becoming information deserts. The South African model therefore recognises that media diversity is a public good deserving of public investment.
Further, outside Africa, more examples exist. For example, Canada has increasingly embraced public support for journalism through programmes such as the Local Journalism Initiative. These interventions were introduced in response to the collapse of local news ecosystems and the emergence of news deserts.
To that end, these international experiences reveal a common principle: public funding is not inherently dangerous to media freedom. But poor governance is.
For Botswana, the proposed Media Development Fund could support investigative journalism, strengthen community media, support innovation and digital transformation, and improve journalism training and professional development.
However, these benefits will only materialise if Botswana designs the Fund correctly.
Consequently, international best practice suggests at least five safeguards: institutional independence, transparent criteria, multi-stakeholder governance, transparency in allocations, and explicit protection of editorial autonomy.
Thus, the Nordic model demonstrates the importance of independent decision-making structures. To demonstrate this, Sweden’s subsidy framework separates funding decisions from day-to-day political authority, thereby helping to preserve public confidence in the system.
Even so, for Botswana, another consideration is sustainability.
The country may consider a hybrid funding model that combines parliamentary appropriations with private sector contributions, donor support, philanthropy, and potentially levies on large digital platforms that increasingly capture advertising revenue generated by news content.
Ultimately, Botswana faces a policy choice. Markets alone do not always sustain the journalism that democracy requires. Investigative reporting, local news, community broadcasting, and public-interest journalism often produce enormous social value while generating limited commercial returns.
So, the Draft Media Bill 2025 presents Botswana with an opportunity to modernise its media ecosystem. Therefore, without leaving anything to chance, a well-designed Media Development Fund could strengthen media diversity, support innovation, and expand access to information. On the other hand, a poorly designed Fund could create perceptions of political influence and undermine public trust.
For this reason, the difference lies not in whether government funding exists, but in whether the institutions that manage it are genuinely independent.
Should Botswana get that balance right, the Media Development Fund could become one of the most consequential investments in democratic infrastructure since independence.
The proposed Media Development Fund in Botswana’s Draft Media Bill 2025 could become a lifeline for struggling journalism or a pathway to political influence. International experience suggests that public funding can strengthen media diversity and public-interest journalism, but only where robust safeguards protect editorial independence, writes KABO RAMASIA