22 Aug 2024

Content creators and filmmakers have been urged to educate and inform themselves before they think of monetising their craft. 

Creative activist, Eddie Mhingo, said this at a one day Content Creators Pitso, hosted by the National Arts Council of Botswana (NACB) in Gaborone on Tuesday. 

Mhingo said it was important for a content creator to know their strength and weaknesses as well as their partners in order to learn their value. 

He said being informed on each other’s strength and weaknesses and one’s own, called for a quality product collaborated by the best, hence the issue of monetising. 

He said whilst Batswana perceived that they cannot make it or were still learning, their creative skills have in actual fact been used in South Africa. 

Mhingo said it was this perceived challenge that had kept the Botswana creative sector behind. He said another challenge that was contributing to the slow growth of the creative sector in Botswana was cost of data. 

“Data is costly in Botswana, and it limits viewers therefore content creators are unable to put their work out there for their viewers,” Mhingo said, adding that this was not a challenge in countries like South Africa. 

He said Botswana had a high penetration of cellphone use, but was of not much use as data was costly. 

Furthermore, Mhingo said knowing the difference in terminology and technology is another challenging factor in the growth of the sector. 

He said people need to differentiate between filmmaker and content creator, as they do different things and should be recognised as such. 

Similarly with technology, he said knowing the difference in the space would enable creators to know how their viewers would consume their content and therefore able to use the right technology best suited for such audience. 

The Creators Content Pitso is held for content creators and filmmakers as a platform to encourage collaborations amongst them, give buyers opportunity to engage with creators and producers and map a way of monetising their content. 

It also seeks to explore ways of monetising for creative economic growth and value chain for job creation. 

The Content Creators Pitso also seeks to deploy Intellectual Property tools for content creators and producers. Ends