Bantu Film Festival challenges Botswana to build real film economy
JOHANNES KAMBAI | Friday October 23, 2026 12:59
There is a particular quietness that settles over a cinema after the credits roll. At the fifth Bantu Film Festival this week in Gaborone, that quiet has not lasted long. Conversations spill into the foyer, into who actually owns the stories we keep telling about ourselves.
Founded in 2022, it has grown from a hopeful local experiment into a Pan-African gathering that refuses to treat film as pure entertainment. This year the timing feels deliberate. Botswana is marking sixty years of independence, and the organisers are asking a harder question: can the country’s creative industries move from applause to actual livelihoods? One film that has lingered is Netumbo: A Leader Beyond Politics, produced by Sophie Haikali. The documentary follows Namibia’s first woman president from a northern village through the liberation years to the highest office.
Speaking at the festival, Haikali said the work is educational and archival in equal measure. Much of the liberation footage still sits outside Namibian hands. Access remains a live issue. When the film screened back home it coincided with a street renaming and drew both current and former presidents. The response, she noted, was appreciation mixed with recognition of the difficulties the country has faced. Looking twenty years ahead, she called the project an honour that also quietly insists women’s contributions belong in the permanent record.The opening-night closing address by Ramphal Kgabanyane of Upic TV went further.
Film, he said, is an economic asset. It can diversify Botswana’s economy, create work across an entire value chain, and turn local stories into intellectual property that stays in Batswana hands. AI and digital tools can help, but only if ownership and cultural control are protected. Districts outside Gaborone are full of stories and talent. Multiple platforms, not just cinema screens, must carry the work.
He left the room with clear challenges: government must deliver predictable policy and stronger copyright protection; investors should fund productions rather than one-off events; platforms need fair deals for independent filmmakers; audiences must buy tickets and build a real following. Success will not be counted in the number of screenings, but in the jobs sustained and the revenue that returns to the people who make the work. With the awards night still ahead on Saturday, the festival is already asking the question that matters most. When the lights come up and the screen goes dark, what happens next?