Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Decentralisation Joseph Mwanamvekha says harnessing the creatives sector could help government generate more money in taxes and foreign exchange. Reacting to a proposal from one of the country’s creative sector players Eric Trinta for government to consider pushing for monetisation and funding for the Arts Council in the 2026/27 National Budget, the minister said having Malawi’s content monetised would also help improve the welfare of artists, some of whom have even died without benefiting from their creativity. Said Mwanamvekha: “It would be government getting money from the sector, as opposed to us giving out money to support the industry.
We will sit down and see how best we can help creatives benefit from this.” Currently, Malawi is among African countries where content on YouTube and Facebook is not monetised. In countries where Facebook and YouTube content is monetised, content creators are paid revenue per mile per 1 000 views. Creators earn depending on the type of content and audience they have.
Trinta observed that due to lack of no content monetisation on Malawi, some artists open accounts in countries where monetisation is available and along with this comes the taxpayer identification number, making all taxes collected from the creatives go to those countries. “We want to ask that we look into this issue as a matter of urgency to open revenue streams, both for government and our artists,” he said. Earlier last year, creatives sought an audience with the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) over monetising online content. But the suspended Macra director general Daudi Suleman said while monetisation of the Malawian content is at an advanced stage, issues preventing the online content from being monetised in the country include low numbers of smart devices and low consumption of digital services.
