25 Aug 2026

The opening session of the Creators Assembly Summit at Maitisong Theatre in Maru-a-Pula set the tone early: music is a career and an industry long before it becomes a performance. 

  Centred on ‘music production and business’, the session brought together producers, artists and repertoire (A&R) specialists and artists from Botswana and South Africa to speak about the work behind the songs and the gaps still holding the industry back.

South African DJ, producer and label manager Mduduzi Memela, better known as DJ Mdoovar, admitted that the business side of music came late for him, as it does for many musicians. 

Early mistakes, he said, often taught artists that they must become marketers, strategists and business owners alongside being performers.Vusi Leeuw, a self described ‘music business architect’ who has worked behind South African careers including TKZee and DJ Kent, spoke about the flip side: invisibility. 

Despite years of A&R work with international names such as Busta Rhymes and Usher, Leeuw said he was often unrecognised in public and has even been turned away from spaces where artists he helped build were welcomed.

 “There’s no ‘him’ without ‘you’,” he argued, making the case for valuing the people working behind the scenes as much as those on stage. A&R is the arm of a record label or an independent role responsible for scouting and developing talent, connecting artists with songwriters and producers, guiding song selection and helping shape an artist’s sound and direction. Botswana rapper, turned producer Bangu Matege shared his own journey, describing the struggle to simply be heard early in his career. His breakthrough, he said, came not from chasing an international sound, but from rapping in his own language.

 The panellists also pointed to limited corporate and government investment in the creative sector, citing funding mismatches and policy gaps. They highlighted Botswana’s inability to monetise YouTube and called for more structured engagement between government, corporates and platforms such as Creators Assembly.

 The discussion then turned to who should take responsibility for these structural gaps. Panelists argued that Botswana’s cultural policy framework was, in one speaker’s words, built from the beginning by the wrong people.

 However, they acknowledged government’s attempts to support the sector and expressed hope that current officials would be more willing to listen. One artist recalled the old CD-submission process required to enter new markets as an example of the kind of bureaucratic friction that needed to be removed. 

DJ Mdoovar added another perspective, drawing from his decision to leave software development after becoming frustrated by pay disparities and pursue music instead. He argued that DJs resisting the shift from turntables to cloud storage were repeating the same mistake artists made when they clung to outdated formats. 

That view sparked disagreement, with another panelist pointing to the global resurgence of vinyl and arguing that streaming’s fractions of a cent pay out hit jazz, gospel and Afro-pop particularly hard because many of their audiences remain loyal to radio and physical formats. Zahara and Brenda Fassie were cited as examples of artists whose huge physical sales do not translate into equivalent streaming value. The panellists also noted that AI-generated music was putting further pressure on songwriter income. 

Representing government, Marang Selolwane of Botswana’s National Arts Council outlined an ongoing artist registration drive aimed at creating a national database to support data backed policymaking. She also detailed monetisation discussions involving Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC), government ministries and Google, while acknowledging that Botswana’s small population and advertising market remain major obstacles.

 The session ended on a practical note, with a banking representative taking creators through the importance of separating personal and business accounts, developing saving habits and building credit over time. ENDS