Botswana at 60: Saving journalism for the next 60 years
THOMAS NKHOMA | Monday October 5, 2026 10:47
Sixty years is a long time in the life of a person but perhaps not so long in the life of a nation. On September 30, Botswana will turn 60 and there will rightly be speeches, celebrations and reminders of how far the country has travelled since independence.
However, anniversaries are also useful pauses. They allow us to ask not only where we have come from but where we are going. For me, the media provides an interesting window through which to look at Botswana at 60.
I entered journalism at a time when the news cycle was measured in hours rather than seconds. Newspapers, radio and, later, television determined what most people knew about the country. Today, anyone with a smartphone can publish to thousands of people before a newsroom has finished checking the facts.
That is progress but it has also created a peculiar paradox: we have never had more access to information, yet we have never had greater difficulty determining what information deserves our confidence. This is one of the great challenges of Botswana’s next 60 years.
The media itself is under pressure. Newspapers are losing circulation, advertising has migrated to digital platforms, newsrooms are struggling to retain experienced journalists and the traditional business model is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
At the same time, social media has created an enormous appetite for instant information, often rewarding speed, outrage and sensationalism rather than patient journalism. These pressures have been evident in Botswana’s media sustainability debate.
A starving newsroom cannot be expected to produce journalism of depth indefinitely. This is where government has a role but it must be the right role.
Government is a major advertiser and remains the owner of much of the country’s public media. It therefore has considerable influence over the information environment, whether it intends to exercise that influence or not.
The temptation for any government is to regard favourable coverage as good communication. Conversely government communication and journalism serve different purposes. Government explains and promotes its programmes. Journalism interrogates them.
A healthy democracy needs both.
Botswana’s current media reform process is, therefore, important. The Draft Media Bill proposes an independent self-regulatory framework, protection of journalistic sources and editorial independence, safeguards against abusive legal action and a Media Development Fund. Government has also indicated an intention to transform state media into genuinely public media.
The real test, however, will be whether these ideas produce institutions that remain independent when the political winds change. That is a lesson Botswana should have learnt by now. Institutions should not be designed for the government we like. They must work even when a government we do not like is in power.
The media, however, cannot put every problem at government’s door. It must also confront its own weaknesses. Journalism must resist the pressure to publish first and verify later. It must distinguish fact from opinion, investigate rather than merely react and rediscover the value of explaining complicated issues to ordinary citizens.
The future of journalism may not belong to newspapers, radio or television as we know them. It may belong to whatever platform comes next but the need for journalism will remain because technology can distribute information. It cannot by itself determine its meaning, context or significance. This is where I believe Botswana has an opportunity.
We can build a media environment that is digitally sophisticated without becoming intellectually shallow, commercially sustainable without surrendering editorial independence and free without abandoning professional responsibility. The same principle applies to government.
The government of the next 60 years will have to become increasingly comfortable with scrutiny. It will need to understand that criticism is not necessarily hostility and that an independent media can be an ally in identifying problems before they become crises.
There are other landmines ahead: artificial intelligence, disinformation, declining news revenues, political manipulation of information, media capture and the concentration of digital power in the hands of a few global platforms.
We should not wait for them to explode before we start thinking about them. At 60, Botswana has the advantage of experience. We know what happens when institutions are allowed to mature.
We also know that institutions can stagnate when yesterday’s solutions are treated as permanent answers to tomorrow’s problems.
The next 60 years will, therefore, require something more difficult than celebration. They will require imagination. We must preserve what has served us well while having the courage to change what no longer does.
Government must communicate more openly. The media must become more sustainable and professionally rigorous. Citizens must become more discerning consumers of information and institutions must be strong enough to survive the personalities that temporarily occupy them.
Botswana’s first 60 years were about building a country. The next 60 should be about ensuring that the institutions we have built are capable of carrying that country into a very different future.
*Thomas Tlhaloganyo Nkhoma is MISA-Botswana chairperson.