- BFA and BAA receive the most money as the highest impact sporting codes
After weeks of waiting, Botswana National Sports Commission (BNSC) has finally disbursed grants to its affiliated National Sports Associations (NSAs) for the 2022/2023 financial year, The Business Weekly Sports has established.
BNSC used a new model for allocating grants on which NSAs were now scored against. Once again, the impact criteria used resulted in football and athletics receiving the most funding as the leading high impact sporting codes. “In total, the BFA will receive P17 million, that is P3 million for administration, P10 million to support the Zebras AFCON qualification and P4 million for The Mares AWCON journey.
“Yes, football is not bringing in results (international competitions) but it must be noted that it is contributing quite significantly to our objectives.” said the CEO of BNSC, Tuelo Serufho, in an interview. As a significant contributor to BNSC objectives, Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) received the second highest grant of P1.5 million. The BNSC has six broad objectives derived from its strategy of 2028, the National Vision 2036 and the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Culture Development’s strategic plan.
The six objectives are contribution of sport to society, athlete’s performance, hosting high profile events, increased (mass) participation, enhanced national pride and unity, and social impact. The first four were derived from BNSC Vision 2028 while the last two come from Vision 2036. Other NSAs that received significant grants from BNSC are boxing, netball, softball and volleyball. These are classified in Group One alongside the BFA and BAA as high impact sporting codes.
“From there we have Group Two, which has quite a lot of NSAs,” Serufho said. “In this group we have decided to prioritise rugby and tennis mainly because the two are showing improvement in terms of contributing to our objectives.” Meanwhile, BNSC recently said it would release this financial year’s grants to NSAs late because its subvention declaration from MYSC was delayed.
