Property – Retail & Commercial Property · Editorial

By Moakanyi Magazine · June 2026

A public facility is only an asset once people use it. The Masunga Sports Complex crossed that line in March 2026 when it opened to public bookings, turning a built structure into a venue the community and local enterprise can actually book. The opening is the easy part of the story; the more revealing part is that councillors immediately turned to the question of whether anyone would use it.

Rather than treating the ribbon-cutting as the finish line, they proposed solar lighting and reduced booking fees – two practical measures aimed squarely at utilisation rather than ceremony. It is the right instinct, and an uncommon one in public infrastructure, where the spending and the attention usually stop at completion.

The Levers: Light and Price

Solar lighting extends usable hours into the evening, which matters for a working community that plays and trades after dark, and it does so without loading the facility with a heavy grid-power bill – a recurring cost that quietly closes many rural facilities once the budget for opening them is spent. Reduced booking fees lower the barrier for the clubs, events and small enterprises most likely to fill the calendar. Together they treat the complex as something to be run, not just opened.

A facility earns its keep through bookings, not ribbon-cuttings.

Masunga's small move holds a general lesson for community infrastructure across Botswana: the construction cost is settled at the opening, but the value is decided every day afterward by how affordable and accessible the place remains. Councils that fund operations and access as deliberately as they fund construction get used facilities; those that do not get monuments. Light and price are the unglamorous tools that tell the two apart.

Sources: allAfrica