The Copyright Society of Botswana told its own members, in a document signed by its board chairperson and its chief executive, that it is running nine percentage points below the royalty distribution basis its regulator approves. The minutes of its annual general meeting of 10 August 2024 record the ratio as 61:39 against an approved 70:30, in a year when the society posted record revenue of BWP 18.5 million, a deficit of BWP 4.6 million, and a clean audit opinion. At the same meeting its chief executive told members that BWP 6 million of international royalty provision was “pending, Sony’s payments.” No copyright changed hands. What is on the record is a money-flow document, and it does not entirely agree with itself.
What COSBOTS is, and what it is not#
This distinction decides how to read everything else. Section 36A of Botswana’s Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, Chapter 68:02, establishes by name “a collective administration body to be known as the Copyright Society of Botswana,” structured as a non-profit company limited by guarantee. The Act makes it responsible for granting licences “in written agreement with the owners of copyright,” for “setting rates for royalties in accordance with acceptable international standards,” and for “the collection and distribution of royalties to appropriate owners of copyright.” Section 36A(3)(a) requires it to “represent the owners of the copyright.”
So COSBOTS licenses users, administers the money and distributes it. It does not own the songs. It is not a publisher, not a label, and not a distributor of recordings. A motswako writer in Gaborone who registers with COSBOTS has not assigned anything to it.
The ratio, in the society’s own words#
Board chairperson Bakalanga Malikongwa is minuted stating the position flatly: “The Distribution is 70: 30 which is stipulated by CIPA and COSBOTS is currently at 61:39. The 70% is for the creatives’ distributions and 30% for administration.” She told the meeting she had committed three years earlier to reaching 70 percent by 2025. Chief executive Letlhogonolo Makwinja described the shortfall as “just a small gap from the 70% stipulated by CIPA.” Treasurer Winnie Sekani confirmed the 61 percent figure in a trade account of the meeting published on 16 August 2024, saying COSBOTS works to ensure that “copyright owners are the primary beneficiaries” of its collections.
On revenue of BWP 18,536,734, nine percentage points is worth roughly BWP 1.67 million in one year.
One qualification belongs here. No document issued by the Companies and Intellectual Property Authority stating a 70:30 figure could be found. The Act requires COSBOTS to distribute “on an equitable basis, approved by the Copyright Office,” and to have its rules approved by that office, but it names no percentage. An attempt to fetch the regulator’s collective-management page on 11 November 2026 timed out. The 70:30 is COSBOTS’s own account of what its regulator requires, given on the record by two of its officers. It is not something this desk has seen the regulator publish.
The figures inside one document that do not agree#
The year’s revenue growth appears twice in the same signed minutes as two different numbers. The chief executive gives “47% revenue growth.” The finance manager, minutes later, describes the same movement as “a 14% from the BWP 12.5 million.” Running the society’s own two revenue figures gives 47.6 percent. The 14 percent is not explained anywhere in the document.
Expenses fare no better. The minutes record the correct underlying figures, down from BWP 13.3 million to BWP 11.6 million, and then call that a “36% drop due to sticking to a strict budget.” It is a 12 percent drop. 36 percent is the distribution-growth figure from the paragraph immediately before it.
The 16th Distribution does not sum either. Reported components of BWP 9,558,290 for music rights and BWP 2,027,577 for reprographic rights add to BWP 315,796 more than the BWP 11,270,071 total stated alongside them.
None of this is proof of anything beyond itself: these are the transcription failures that creep into long live-streamed meetings. But members approved audited accounts on the strength of a presentation containing them.
Which way the money flows#
The most consequential claim in the minutes is about geography. Malikongwa told the meeting that under an 80:20 local quota, “in the past only 20% distributions were allocated to our local creators, however currently 72% has been distributed to local members with 28% being distributed as foreign royalties.”
Two distributions earlier the position was close to the reverse. In the 14th Distribution, reported on 15 December 2021, COSBOTS paid out BWP 3,428,127: BWP 2,134,348.70 to foreign rightsholders, BWP 950,965.60 to local artists, and BWP 342,812.70 to the Social and Cultural Fund. Those three lines reconcile exactly to the total, and the fund line is exactly 10 percent of it. Local content was then 31 percent of airplay across the three monitored broadcast services. Makwinja said at the time: “Once again, we are still seeing a lot of money taken out of the country.”
A swing from roughly 69 percent foreign to 28 percent foreign in two cycles would be one of the sharper repatriations of royalty flow on the continent. But no source checked publishes the year-by-year series that would let anyone verify it or date the crossover. And in the same 2024 minutes, the itemised provisions show international royalties held at BWP 7.5 million against local matched royalties of BWP 406,000. Provisions are money held, not money distributed, and the two should not be confused. Still, the society is sitting on a great deal more foreign-destined money than matched local money while describing its distributions as 72 percent local.
The six million pula sentence#
Asked how a planned creative hub in Tlokweng would be funded, Makwinja is minuted saying that “the Provision for International Royalties is at BWP 6m pending, Sony’s payments.”
That line deserves care rather than excitement. The minutes identify no Sony entity. There is no date, no term, no territory, and no statement of whether the BWP 6 million is money COSBOTS expects to receive or money it holds to pay out. Because a provision is a liability, the natural accounting reading is the latter, but the phrasing supports either. Nothing in the document alleges any failure or wrongdoing by any company, and nothing here does either. The point is narrower: a national collecting society’s chief executive, answering a funding question in front of 203 members, reached for a major label’s name and a seven-figure number, and the minutes offer nothing else to go on. The same provision appears a second time in the same minutes as BWP 7.5 million, and the document never reconciles the two.
What COSBOTS does not control#
Section 35G of the Act imposes a levy on imported and locally manufactured blank carriers, compact discs and copying equipment. Subsection (2) sends it to the Department of Customs and Excise and into a fund established by the Minister of Finance and Development Planning. COSBOTS appears nowhere in the section.
Malikongwa confirmed this from the society’s side, calling it “an oversight when the Act was formed” that the Levy on Technical Devices Fund “was left under the Administration of the Ministry instead of COSBOTS,” and acknowledging that “COSBOTS has limited control of the funds and how it can be distributed.”
Unclaimed money became a building#
Makwinja told the meeting that the window for claiming unmatched royalties has been cut from seven years to two and that beyond it “royalties cannot be claimed.” Malikongwa then explained what happens to the remainder: “the funds that were used to buy the building were money that was not claimed after the agreed period,” and the Act “allowed COSBOTS to use the money appropriately after a certain time has passed.”
In the year under review, BWP 1.6 million of unmatched local royalties and BWP 1.5 million of uncollected pandemic relief were written back into the distribution pool, so part of the record 16th Distribution was recycled unclaimed money rather than new collection. The chairperson told members that royalties exceeding BWP 500,000 remained unmatched, across a catalogue she described as spanning hip hop, motswako and trap.
One member put the consequence plainly. The minutes record that “Mr Ephraim Khan highlighted that he is one of the first members of COSBOTS, registered as a Producer but has never received any royalty.” No figure and no resolution is minuted against his name.
The archive went dark#
Everything above comes from documents COSBOTS published itself. On 11 November 2026, cosbots.com did not resolve from this desk’s server, returning NXDOMAIN on repeated lookups. The signed minutes were readable only through an archived copy captured on 17 June 2026. No source explains the status of the domain.
What this means for artists#
If you are a songwriter, producer or performer registered with COSBOTS, four things follow.
First, the gap is the society’s own number: roughly BWP 1.67 million a year not reaching creators, measured against what the society says its regulator expects. Ask at the next general meeting whether the 2025 target was met.
Second, registration is the highest-return administrative act available to you. Unmatched money does not wait. The claim window is two years, after which, in the chief executive’s own words, it “cannot be claimed.” Money nobody claimed has already been converted into a building.
Third, if you have international works, ask specifically how they are collected. The minutes contain a member raising exactly that, and no recorded answer.
Fourth, keep your own copies. The documents that let anyone check any of this sat on a website that no longer resolves. Download your statements, keep your distribution notices, and treat every AGM pack as a record you may one day need to produce yourself.
COSBOTS was audited clean for the year in question. That opinion addresses whether the statements are free of material misstatement. It does not certify that the distribution ratio met the approved basis, and nothing in the minutes suggests the auditor was asked to.
