Louis Rwakiranya of Burundi
A total number of 157 participants attended the seminar representating 126 countries including 39 African countries. There are a total of 162 category 1 and 11 federations.
The workshop started with a presentation for the development activities supported by FIVB during the last three years presented by FIVB development commission president Vicente Araujo and FIVB technical and development director Helgi Thorsteinsson. They showed the great increase in the Development Fund year by year.
FIVB President Jizhong Wei evaluated the importance of involving the local authorities in our sport as a tool to facilitate the work of the federation and secure the support of the infrastructure in their countries. He gave the example of Burundi and Burkina Faso where the presidents of both countries directly support and help volleyball.
“We implemented our Development Plan in 2010 and we succeeded to make a long jump forwards in these two years, but we promise more now through our ambitious development commission in Africa,” CAVB President Dr Amr Elwani said during the his intervention.
“We are looking forward now to have a collective strategy for Africa depending on the reality of the conditions in each country,” he added.
“The future of African volleyball will be very brilliant according to the new development strategy supported by the FIVB,” Chad Volleyball Federation president Idriss Dokony said. “I left CAVB official work in 2004 untill I returned back as CAVB vice president in 2011 and I can see obviously the great difference in the development of the sport all over the world. Now we need to work hard for a new project in Africa that can assure reaching each city in Africa depending on the real needs of each country. This is the great value of such seminars to exchange the ideas between all the countries of the world.”
Zimbabwe Volleyball Federation president Fredreck Ndlovu mentioned that “Africa has now great potential to progress through the great work done by both CAVB and FIVB and I was happy to present what we did in Zimbabwe in terms of development of the sport in our country in this seminar. He presented the development plan that was implemented in Zimbabwe to involve all the provinces in volleyball and beach volleyball.”
Togo Volleyball Federation president Ayaovi Babanawo said: “I think the seminar is good for Category I and II NFs to intensify our work in both volleyball and beach volleyball fields. I think that the big jump of the sport development was in beach through the fantastic Continental Cup qualifier to the Olympic Games. He presented the development of the sport in his country through “volleyball at School Programme” that was attended by the FIVB President.
Here are also further comments made by the African delegates during the seminar:
Louis Rwakiranya (Burundi): “I’m very happy to see the respect from all the world volleyball to our achievement in the Junior Beach Cup where we won the gold medals although we didn’t do it to the finals in Canada. We are also happy with the reaction of our government headed by the president of the republic and their continuous help”.
Camilo Antao (Mozambique): “We are grateful to the FIVB for their help to support the category I and II NFs and we want their help to establish a development center in Zone 6 which can serve 11 countries in this area”.
Mamadou Ndoye (Senegal): “We had the problem of little number of participating countries in the courses organized by the development center in Dakar due to transportation expenses and we want to find solution for this problem to use the center in the best way”.
Charles Uyisenga (Rwanda): “We used well the support of the FIVB and CAVB to go through our development programme and we are now able to participate in most of the continental competitions but we could do a great jump in beach volleyball through the support of our government till the Rwandan youth team won the continental championship in Togo”.
