CAF, UCT PUSH FOR WORLD-CLASS AFRICAN SOCCER LEADERS

Caf president Patrice Motsepe’s quest to bring world-class administration to African football and its member associations was boosted yesterday when they partnered with the University of Cape Town (UCT).

The partnership between the two organisations will see UCT providing bespoke courses and programmes as an Africa Centre of Education Excellence.

This programme will drive knowledge, create capacity, and strengthen administrative skills amongst African football stakeholders. Caf secretary-general Veron Mosengo-Omba said this has always been Motsepe’s vision — to capacitate African football administrators.

“I have to first to thank the president of Caf, Doctor Patrice Motsepe, because when he was elected as a president in his 10 action plans one of the key element was to strengthen education and capacity building,” Mosengo-Omba said.

“Today Caf administration is implementing it with one of the best universities in the continent. This is a very important day because football is getting more and more complex and competitive and we need to also raise the level of competence of our member associations and stakeholders.

“So, this is a very important day. All our member associations’ administration will benefit from this. Football needs to be organised and developed. You need specific skills to do it and this will come from this programme.”

UCT Council chairperson Norman Arendse is a veteran sports administrator in the country, having served in the SA Football Association (Safa) national executive committee (NEC) and boards of the South African Rugby Association (Saru) and Cricket South Africa (CSA).

Arendse knows very well about the need for this kind of specialised education and training for sports administrators on the continent, having dealt with some of the challenges first-hand.

“Well both organisations, University of Cape Town as the leading university in Africa and one of the leading universities globally, and Caf as the mother body confederation of all African football, both are highly-valued organisations.

“This will add even more value and will contribute towards building capacity within Caf, especially amongst the officials off the field and UCT, given its track record in teaching and learning and in research, is ideally placed to make such a contribution towards the transformation of Caf to a true world-class organisation,” Arendse said. — SABC.