Mighty Warriors unable to qualify for African Games

THE Zimbabwe senior women’s national football team Mighty Warriors will not play in the 12th edition of the African Games set for Morocco in August.

Eugenia Chidakwa, Team Zimbabwe’s chef de mission for the games, said organisers indicated that only countries which contested the Women’s African Cup of Nations finals in Ghana last year will take part in this year’s African Games.

The games will have 27 sport codes, of which 17 will be used to qualify for the Olympic Games set for Tokyo, Japan, next year.

“These qualifying standards were set up by the various sporting associations’ confederations and for the men, we were told that countries that will qualify for the Afcon 2019 finals in Egypt will automatically qualify for the African Games,” said Chidakwa, who is also a director in the Ministry of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation.

The Zimbabwe Under-23 squad this afternoon takes on Mozambique in Maputo in the first leg of the Afcon qualifiers.

Chidakwa said countries are expected to submit their teams’ lists by numbers to the African Games organising committee by Monday next week.

“So as a country I will only be able to give you our expected delegation and projected budget for these games after Monday. I also need to highlight that while bias will obviously be towards the 17 sport codes that are Olympic qualifiers, we have also told our national sports associations that focus will also be on athletes and sport codes that are likely to give us medals in Morocco,” said Chidakwa.

Chidakwa will be assisted by Martin Dururu from the Sports and Recreation Commission on the technical side and Memory Pakati from the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee on the administrative side.

The African Games are run by the African Union with support of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa.