President Duma Boko now says the Steve Harvey arrangement cost P1.7 billion and was “not the best,” while Minister Moeti Mohwasa confirms the contract remains alive and under pressure from local creatives. As government wrestles with how to get out, the arithmetic shows why the question has become increasingly difficult to leave unresolved.
GAZETTE REPORTERS
In a wide-ranging television interview broadcast on Sunday, President Duma Boko was confronted with a controversy his administration inherited but has yet to escape: government’s agreement with Steve Harvey Global.
His answer pushed the deal back into the centre of public debate.
Boko said his administration had taken the view that the arrangement “was not the best” and disclosed a figure that raised the stakes further: P1.7 billion.
Until now, parliamentary scrutiny had placed the Botswana Ignite partnership at more than P1 billion. Boko’s disclosure suggests government’s exposure may be considerably larger than the figure recently placed before the Public Accounts Committee.
But he also made clear that political dissatisfaction does not make for an easy exit. Government, he said, must establish what the law allows and any cancellation must be carried out in accordance with the rule of law.
A day later, Minister for State President, Defence and Security Moeti Mohwasa confirmed that government has met representatives of Steve Harvey Global and Botswana’s creative industry as it searches for a way forward.
“There is a contract that is running,” Mohwasa said, while acknowledging “pressure from the local creative sector to terminate it.”
Together, the statements have returned the controversy to the public fold. Beyond the procurement questions and legal difficulty now confronting government sits a simpler question: what does this money mean in the context of Botswana’s creative economy?
The answer is perhaps the most uncomfortable part of the deal.
HALF A MINISTRY
Government paid approximately P355 million for the first year of Botswana Ignite.
The Ministry of Sport and Arts has an annual recurrent budget of roughly P595 million. The first-year Harvey payment is equivalent to almost 60 percent of that amount.
The Ministry of Youth and Gender has a recurrent budget of about P687 million. The same payment is equivalent to roughly 52 percent of its allocation.
Together, the two ministries’ recurrent budgets amount to about P1.28 billion. If Boko’s P1.7 billion figure represents the full cost of the Harvey arrangement, it is roughly a third larger than what Botswana budgets in an entire year to run both ministries.
The expenditures are not directly interchangeable. But as a measure of scale, the comparison is difficult to ignore: one entertainment arrangement reached a financial magnitude greater than the annual recurrent resources of two ministries carrying national mandates for youth, gender, sport and the arts.
THE P2 MILLION LINE
The disparity becomes sharper inside the Department of Broadcasting Services.
According to national budget figures analysed by The Botswana Gazette, its annual allocation for acquiring content stands at approximately P2 million, the budget line through which the national broadcaster buys programming, including work by Botswana filmmakers and production houses.
Against that figure, the P355 million first-year payment is roughly 177 times the entire annual content-acquisition allocation.
The comparison cuts directly into one of the creative industry’s longest-running grievances: local producers have struggled to secure commissions and sustainable funding from their own national broadcaster while government found hundreds of millions of pula for an externally driven project.
Figures presented to Parliament put the cost of 26 episodes of Family Feud Botswana at approximately P20.9 million, or just over P800,000 per episode. At that price, the entire P2 million annual content-acquisition budget would buy fewer than three episodes.
TWO HOURS WEEKLY
BTV operates 24 hours a day, requiring 8,760 hours of programming every year. On an expansive calculation of the Harvey project’s television and training outputs, they would account for roughly 100 hours in a year, little more than one percent of BTV’s annual schedule.
Yet the flagship production was not filmed in Botswana.
Family Feud Botswana was produced in South Africa despite government having spent more than P56 million upgrading broadcasting infrastructure at home, including facilities at the Mass Media Complex.
Government’s own accounting put participation in the first phase at 613 people, including 260 contesting families. Dividing the P355 million payment by that figure is not an accounting measure of individual cost because the contract covered far more than participation. But it provides another measure of scale: roughly P580,000 for every person government counted as having participated.
THE SECTOR’S OWN NUMBERS
The contrast is sharper because government itself says the creative economy matters.
Sport and Arts Minister Jacob Kelebeng has told Parliament that the cultural and creative industries contribute approximately 3.1 percent of GDP and account for 6.2 percent of the country’s workforce.
Government has also earmarked P200 million from the alcohol levy to support youth and the creative sector. Yet that entire initiative is smaller than the P355 million paid during just the first year of the Harvey arrangement.
On Boko’s newly disclosed P1.7 billion figure, the deal would be equivalent to more than eight such P200 million funding programmes.
The numbers expose the contradiction that has followed Botswana Ignite from the beginning: government justified the project as an intervention intended to develop Botswana’s creative industry, yet its financial architecture dwarfed the resources available to that industry itself.
P470M TO P1.7BN
The arithmetic also shows how dramatically the project appears to have expanded.
When the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board approved direct procurement in June 2021, contemporary reporting placed the proposed three-year value at approximately P470 million. More recently, the Public Accounts Committee was told that the partnership was worth more than P1 billion.
Now the President has spoken of P1.7 billion.
Each figure raises questions about what changed between the original procurement approval, the agreement eventually concluded and the obligations government now faces. With no competitive tender, there was also no competing market price against which Parliament or the public could readily judge value for money.
A LIVE CONTRACT
The dispute has now entered a different phase.
The question confronting the Boko administration is no longer simply whether it approves of a decision made by its predecessor. The President has effectively said it does not.
The harder question is what happens after reaching that conclusion.
Continuing risks further expenditure on a project government no longer appears convinced represents value for money. Cancelling may carry legal and financial consequences.
Mohwasa confirmed meetings with both local creatives and Steve Harvey Global but declined to disclose what the discussions had produced.
Botswana is therefore in an unusual position: government is questioning a contract that remains in force; the creative industry is demanding its termination; the other contracting party is being engaged; and the President says any exit must survive the test of law.
Meanwhile, the arithmetic remains.
P355 million in the first year. Almost 60 percent of the Sport and Arts recurrent budget. More than half the Youth and Gender recurrent budget. Roughly 177 times the annual DBS content-acquisition allocation. More than the P200 million earmarked to support the creative sector. And, according to the President’s latest disclosure, a total arrangement that may reach P1.7 billion.
Those numbers do not answer the legal question of how Botswana gets out of the Steve Harvey agreement.
They explain why the question of whether it does, and how quickly it finds an answer, has become increasingly difficult to avoid.