Maybe my comment should have been more clear. I don’t think it’s surprising or bad that they don’t have their own launch vehicle, I just found the headline a bit misleading because it could sound that way. It’s still a great achievement.
I get what you're saying, something like "Botswana successfully begins orbital operations of its first satellite" would be more accurate, but simply not clickbaity enough.
It's standard language used by the press. As explained further up the comment chain, very few nations have the capability to even put a satellite into orbit.
The notability is that they have a satellite up for their purposes; they're not trying to claim that they did the launch themselves.
If this were some random corporation, none of you wouldn't have blinked an eyelid at a title like "Megacorp successfully launches first satellite" when all but 3-4 companies in the world rely on someone else to do the launch.
There's more hair-splitting going on here than in a hair salon.
