FAM seeks to register all football academies in order to monitor and regulate them effectively

FAM President Fleetwood Haiya with technical director Benjamin Kumwenda in Cairo

* After attending a Talent Development Scheme (TDS) workshop in Cairo, Egypt

* FIFA’s flagship that discusses how best football associations can nurture and develop talent through the TDS platform

* This programme is closely linked to the export strategy that we are promoting through registered and well structured football academies in Malawi

By Duncan Mlanjira

Football Association of Malawi (FAM) president, Fleetwood Haiya emphasises that “grassroots football is the heart and soul of the game [and] represents the future as it denotes strategic thinking for the game to develop beyond” his administration’s terms of office.

He said this on his Facebook page after returning from Cairo, Egypt for a Talent Development Scheme (TDS) workshop, which is FIFA’s flagship that discusses “how best football associations can nurture and develop talent through the TDS platform”.

“This programme is closely linked to the export strategy that we are promoting through registered and well structured football academies in Malawi.

“We have elected to invest into grassroots football and TDS structures comes to support and consolidate the project. As part of this ambitious project we have committed that through TDS we are going to ensure that we have raised our institutional academy — the Luwinga project  that is already under construction in Mzuzu.

“Besides that, we have also embarked on a project that seeks to register all football academies in Malawi so that we can be able to monitor and regulate them effectively.

“FIFA has promised to support the project at Luwinga and that support will also be extended support to other private football academies in terms of capacity building and other elements.

“Essentially, Luwinga project will be the model for other academies in the country,” said Haiya, who was elected into office in December last year and has already made remarkable and positive contributions for Malawi’s future of the Beautiful Game.

According to Fam.mw, other countries at the FIFA knowledge exchange workshop under the TDS, were the hosts Egypt, Tanzania, Uganda, Mauritius, Djibouti, Benin, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso.

The Malawi delegation comprised technical director, Benjamin Kumwenda and TDS project manager Anderson Kamanga, who travelled two days earlier for the workshop that will help Malawi prepare for the opening of the all-inclusive Luwinga Academy later this year.

“The objective of the workshop is to equip the selected countries with knowledge on talent identification and development and management of a high-performance centre,” said the report on Fam.mw, adding that the participants were also enlightened on the role of talent coaches that FIFA will send to the countries.

Fam.mw quoted Kumwenda as saying: “FIFA will provide a talent coach who will oversee operations at the Luwinga Inclusive Academy. In other countries the coaches have already started their operations and we expect one in few weeks time.”

The Luwinga Inclusive Academy primary goal is to nurture young talent into professional footballers while ensuring they receive a quality education.

To achieve this, the academy will operate alongside the academic calendar, scheduled to commence in September 2024.

Luwinga Academy is expected to be a model and one of the best football academies in Africa, aimed at producing quality players for Malawi through a structured player development pathway.

The programme is intended to make use of football’s ability to teach life skills such as commitment and teamwork as well as aiming to prepare academy players to be future citizens, bearing in mind that only a tiny proportion will become professional footballers, and broaden their economic and professional horizons through football, empower them and ensure their employability.

Meanwhile, Haiya said while attending the TDS workshop, he also took advantage to visit Malawi Embassy in Cairo where he said he had a very fruitful discussion with the Malawi Ambassador to the Arab Republic of Egypt, Her Execellency Catherine Nurujean Kunje.

“We believe that such close collaboration with our diplomatic officials will not only enhance visibility of our football programs but also help us get connections and support for the game to transform in Malawi,” he said.

In March, Haiya also engaged with Malawi’s Members of Parliament (MPs) where he urged them to ensure that their constituency football competitions are registered with the association’s structures.

Ahead of political elections campaigns, most MPs — both aspiring and incumbents — entice the electorate with promises of development by sponsoring football and netball tournaments, which sadly die a natural death when the politicians are voted into office or lose the race.

To discourage that, Haiya visited the legislators at Parliament in Lilongwe when he appraised them on the country’s football development blueprint and how MPs can align themselves to the FA football programmes.

A report by Fam.mw said during the interface, Haiya presented 1,000 footballs to the lawmakers to be distributed among their 193 constituencies where each MP will get five footballs.

Haiya pointed out that constituency football competitions play a big role in football development in Malawi, hence the need to regulate them, saying: “As MPs, your collective efforts and investment in sponsoring football competitions in every corner of the country is phenomenal.

“Thus, we appreciate your commitment to helping the development of football in the country. However, most of the constituency competitions are not regulated, and we request that each one of you should register their competitions with our structures.

“This will enable us to provide necessary technical support such as equipment and capacity building for coaches, referees, and administrators.

“We will also be assigning scouts to your competitions to identify players who can be groomed and be given equal opportunity for selection at various levels of our football such as the Super League and national teams,” he said.

For this reason, Haiya asked the MPs to diversify their football sponsorships and incorporate women and youth competitions so that the sponsorships fall in line with FAM’s football development focus areas.

“Women’s football has proved to be of great potential — unfortunately, there is not much focus in most areas. We do not have many such competitions across the country as the concentration is only on men’s football.

“There are a lot of good players at youth and women’s football who do not have a platform. Therefore, we encourage honourable members to introduce these competitions,” he said.

Speaker of Parliament Catherine Gotani Hara thanked Haiya for the gesture and assured FAM that they will comply with the guidance to register their competitions with FAM.

“This is historic for a sitting FAM president to come to Parliament and donate footballs as well as enlighten us on the best practices of managing football competitions at constituency levels.

“We promise FAM that we will engage FA District committees to get guidance on managing competitions. We will also try our best to promote women’s and youth football in our areas,” Gotani Hara said.