MBABANE: Swaziland News (Pty) Ltd has received the first payment from Facebook after qualifying for monetization, the online publication is registered in South Africa.
Ziphozonke Ngubeni, the Director of Swaziland News in charge of Digital Access said the publication, will soon introduce an international payment system that will enable readers around the world, to subscribe with their Credit and Debit cards among others.
“After receiving funding to upgrade the website and implement other projects, with the large number of global followers we are hoping to introduce more revenue generation systems to ensure that, the publication is financially stable and independent,” said the Director.
On another note, editor Zweli Martin Dlamini urged the Eswatini Government to speed-up the process of ensuring that, emaSwati earn money with their digital content.
After conducting a digital research in 2017, Dlamini collaborated with a South African citizen who is an expert in technology and registered an online publication, this was after the Eswatini Government closed his newspaper -Swaziland Shopping that was printed and distributed in shops.
Dlamini developed an idea to establish a publication and then distribute the news digitally, he was then supported by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the international human rights organization, pumped-in about R4million since 2019 for the development of the publication.
The huge international financial support for the Swaziland News came after an international research that concluded that, “there was a need in Eswatini for an independent publication amid media censorship and/or capture”.
Ziphozonke Ngubeni is in charge of technological development of the Swaziland News while Zweli Martin Dlamini is the Director and/or Managing editor in charge of news content.
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