CAF & UCT's partnership to help produce world-class African football leaders

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

This program will drive knowledge, create capacity, and strengthen administrative skills amongst African football stakeholders. CAF General Secretary Veron Mosengo-Omba says 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' admistration 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."

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UCT Council Chair Norman Arendse is a veteran sports administrator in the country, having served in the South African 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 specialized education and training for sports administrators on the continent, having dealt with some of the challenges firsthand.

"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 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.