A NEW LEASE OF LIFE
P20 million set aside for development centres and Botswana Games
Botswana National Sports Commission (BNSC) has embarked on a project to establish 16 development centres around the country. The centres will compliment Botswana Games, which are the country’s flagship youth competitions.
The centres, earmarked for 16 districts, have seven select sport codes, being: athletics, tennis, netball, volleyball, boxing, softball and football. According to BNSC Chief Executive Officer, Tuelo Serufho, they have set aside P20 million for the centres and administration of Botswana Games later this year in December.
The BNSC CEO said the seven sports codes in the pilot project were selected looking at their importance, and the belief that they’d help the commission to achieve its strategic objectives, with more international competitions coming.
“We want programmes to be complementing each other and linking together, rather than operating in isolation,” said Serufho.
Driven by volunteer coaches, the centres will be open to in and out of school youth in order to partly address the challenge of not having sports in public schools. Already, BNSC has made some strides with the centres having managed to procure sports equipment which has been distributed across all the 16 districts. Appointment of national conveners, District Coordinators, as well as consultations with districts, which have agreed to take part in the programme, has also been done.
According to Serufho, there will be sports competitions within districts between now and end of term one, and inter districts competition during recess of second term, which will pave way for national games in December.
“Pre-covid-19, we were hosting the national games in each and every year but, the last few years, we didn’t host the games consistently. However, they are slightly modified, we will not be having the 13 sports disciplines convening in one venue for the finals. So, the likelihood for this year is that we are going to split team sports from individual sports so that we host them at different times in December,” explained Serufho.
Meanwhile, Centres of Sport Excellence sporting facilities will get a major makeover, with Mogoditshane Senior Secondary School and Radisele Junior School earmarked for new developments.
In Radisele, the Commission is in the process of constructing a futsal, volleyball court and beach volleyball courts with ablutions, and the project is set to take six months to complete with a budget of P5.7 million.
“These are the centres which are already in line for upgrade from the last financial year, but we will add some in the next financial year. So, we will keep on selecting them by phases but, others, we will just pick a component of a certain sport and focus on its facilities,” said Serufho.