The Executive Head of Corporate Affairs, Ms. Rachel Mothibatsela, has urged the sporting fraternity in Botswana to commercialise by exploring revenue streams for the benefit of athletes and sports codes as this can help to improve performance, increase outreach and participation and attract support. Speaking at the 2025 Sport Pitso. She said this will go a long way in offsetting operational costs, stating some of the low hanging fruit, such as gate takings, selling merchandise, partnerships with commercial entities and commercialising several other activities.
Mothibatsela also shared learnings from Debswana’s involvement in sport development over the years citing the success stories and challenges. She highlighted that sport has the potential to create employment opportunities and boost economic growth in Botswana. She also shared on Debswana’s Partnership Steering Committees (PSC) model as a successful benchmark for providing effective oversight and improving funding efficiencies through programme monitoring and evaluation. The Partnership Steering Committee model has been a game changer for management of Debswana’s socio-economic development programmes, where the company uses its various skills such as project, risk and financial management to work with sporting codes and CSI project teams to manage programmes.
During the event, Ms. Mothibatsela highlighted that Debswana has invested P180 million in the past ten years on sport development in Botswana supporting various sporting bodies such as Botswana Athletics Association and Botswana Football Association including community teams such as Orapa FC and Galaxy FC in Boteti and Jwaneng respectively. She highlighted that it would be beneficial for Botswana to fully operationalise a high performance centre to benefit the many athletes in the country.
The 2025 Sport Pitso was hosted by the Ministry of Sport and Arts (MOSA), in collaboration with the Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) and the Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC). under the theme “Rethinking Sport: Advancing Botswana to Greater Heights.”
