The BNSC recently completed the National Sport Associations Resource Allocation Scheme (BONSARS) for the financial year 2024-2025, which saw table tennis and tennis emerge as the biggest beneficiaries. Speaking to MmegiSport, the BNSC manager-sport development administration, Kealeboga Keitseng, said the objective of BONSARS, introduced in 2021, is to categorise NSAs into four different tiers. “Tier one is the highest and tier four is the lowest. In BONSARS, we have a contextual framework in terms of our legal basis for coming up with the criteria within the model. We take the framework from Botswana’s Vision 2036, BNSC Vision 2028, and we took some elements from the BNSC 2010 Affiliates Empowerment Policy. In 2010, there was another policy that was used to categorise sporting associations. We also included some elements from the BNSC Act of 2014. The model as it is, was piloted during the 2021-2022 financial year,” he said.
Keitseng said the system was also used in the last financial year and the BNSC Board has approved the model. He said the model has thematic areas such as contribution to sport, the economy, improving athletes' performance, increasing high profile events hosting, increasing participation, increasing national pride, impact and improving administration. “When we talk to NSAs, we sit down with them and highlight that the thematic areas have criteria that we mark sport associations against. For assessment, the NSAs will score themselves in terms of the current level where they look at the criteria and they give themselves scores. This is accompanied by evidence,” he said. Keitseng said when the model was introduced, the NSAs questioned some issues as it was a new system. The codes were inducted to iron out any outstanding queries.
