Botswana approves four new TV networks
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Rebecca Hawkes
| 29 June 2017

Botswana’s Communications Regulatory Authority has issued four licences to operate TV services in the country, following a public call for applicants earlier this year.

The successful companies – Ovy Network, Alfaview, Deep Vibe Productions’ Clouds TV, and Econet Botswana’s Kwese TV – will join China’s*StarTimes*and Mediacore Botswana, who were awarded licenses in 2016 to broadcast in the country.

Alfaview and Ovy will provide subscription satellite TV services, while Clouds TV will be a free-to-air satellite TV network. Kwese TV will be a subscriber-based platform.

“The licensees will carry all the broadcasting obligations including responsibility over suitability of broadcast material for Botswana audience. The broadcast content could be locally produced by the broadcaster or commissioned from third parties in a form of a full channel or a packaged programme,” BOCRA’s deputy director of corporate communications Aaron Nyelesi is quoted as saying in Mmegionline.

Other companies are yet to be awarded licenses, he added, to operate in the country’s growing broadcasting and media industry and offer a variety of entertainment to consumers.
“We desire you to make content that is not only destined for your platforms, but rather content that is also destined for international markets and other broadcasting platforms. I challenge you to change the landscape,” said acting CEO of BOCRA Tshoganetso Kepaletswe.