Botswana to set up film fund and commission with help from Steve Harvey

Thinus Ferreira27-09-2024 ©C21Media

Botswana is looking to grow its film and TV industry, starting with infrastructure and studios space but also launching a film production fund, with the help of US entertainer Steve Harvey and South African production veteran Duncan Irvine.

Family Feud Africa by Rapid Blue for ETV in South Africa, presented by Steve Harvey

The government of the Southern African nation of Botswana is working to create the country’s first film commission, as well as a film fund, and is also busy with building out film studio capacity to rapidly expand the country’s film and TV output capability.

The government is working with the American entertainer Steve Harvey and his company Steve Harvey Global, as well as Duncan Irvine, founder and CEO of Forge Ignite Media & Entertainment, a film and TV consultancy. Former CEO of South Africa-based Rapid Blue Entertainment, Irvine is the director of the Botswana Ignite project.

The aim of Botswana Ignite is to rapidly expand the country’s TV and film sector, to make it commercially viable, to create local content and to aggressively attract international production work.

The project has also set up a TV academy for Botswana in the capital of Gaborone that started offering courses in scripted and unscripted content production, as well as a specialist wildlife film school in Kasane that specialises in natural history film production.

“Botswana has diamonds but we want to expand our creative industry. Steve Harvey visited the country and decided to help us with our vision,” Goitsemang Morekisi, secretary for the Botswanan ministry of state president, said at Mip Africa 2024 earlier this month in Cape Town, South Africa.

Steve Harvey

Morekisi also tells C21 the government is busy establishing the Botswana Film Commission as well as a film fund. Botswana Ignite describes the planned Film Commission as “a strategic organisation with a mandate to promote and develop Botswana as a competitive destination for the creation of film, television and multi-media productions.”

The main role of the Botswana Film Commission, it continues, is to attract a percentage of the global production and investment spend to Botswana and ensure that the economic value of the investment is spread throughout the country and its citizens. “In building a flourishing film and television industry, a Film Commission not only creates jobs and stimulates economic activities, but it also creates a range of knock-on benefits for the people of Botswana,” it adds.

Speaking about the move at the Mip Africa event this month, Harvey stated: “In 10 years, Botswana will become one of the top film industries on the African continent. Nigeria and South Africa have a headstart by leaps and bounds in terms of capability – make no mistake about it. They have a real film and TV industry, they have real production companies and infrastructure – everything is here.”

“What I’m trying to get Africa to understand is how to take advantage of all this rich talent that is on this continent and to get the opportunity to work,” Harvey, the host of US gameshows Family Feud, added.

“Next year we’re going to have more studio space built. We’ve already located some areas and we are going to have these studios built there. Then we’re going to attract outside business through film tax rebates. The caveat is going to be: you can’t bring your foreign company to Botswana unless you hire 25% local people from Botswana. What are they going to say? No. They will say yes because they want the tax rebate.”

Duncan Irvine

Speaking about the initiative with C21, Irvine says Botswana Ignite is also helping the Botswana government to set up a governmental film rebate scheme that will be structured “to accelerate and fuel the country’s film economy and for people to create production companies because local production companies in Botswana will be the engine building the next generation”.

He adds: “Botswana has a very small but very passionate film and TV industry but it’s been quite inwardly focused. It’s been Botswana Television (BTV), YTV and that’s where producers have been selling their shows to, and to South Africa in particular and some have left Botswana to go and work overseas. Part of the excitement is that we’re trying to attract a lot of those experienced people back.”

“The thing that really excites me about Botswana is they understand and recognise they’re a small market so there is a real appetite there to work collaboratively with foreign producers and platforms to get projects away, and that to participate you need to bring not only good ideas and good production values but also put some money on the table.

“That’s being driven more by the government taking a broader look at an industry. The government is looking at how they can create a really exciting, dynamic film and television industry, rather than just how to create great content for Botswana. There’s a real understanding of that. They’re less fixated on whether it will work for a Botswanan audience and more on whether this is a great show that can find an audience, whether that’s in Botswana or not. That really opens the field quite a lot.”

On 12 September a Botswanan adaptation of the Family Feud competition show, Family Feud Botswana, began recording as part of the Botswana Ignite initiative. The show follows the production of two seasons of Family Feud Africa by Rapid Blue for ETV in South Africa, which Harvey hosted and format owner Fremantle distributes.

Harvey also has plans to expand the scheme beyond Botswana: “This programme we’re doing here in Botswana – my goal is to take it to other countries around Africa, so that you can eventually go anywhere in Africa and be a cameraman, can go anywhere and be a set designer, you can go anywhere and do lighting,” he said.