23 Apr 2019

Former Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) president Moses Bantsi is the Congress of the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA) vice president.

Bantsi got the nod for the position during the 22nd CAA Congress held in Yaoundé, Cameroon recently by a virue of being the CAA Southern Region president.

Hamad Kalkaba from Cameroon retained position as the CAA president while the senior vice president position went to Jackson Tuwei from Kenya and Amita Diarra from Mali was also chosen vice president.

Other vice presidents are Ibrahim Shehu from Nigeria, Bruno Konga of Central Africa Republic and Abdelkhakim Dib of Algeria.

Bantsi said the appointment was great honour as he had been with athletics for many years.

Last year, he said CAA adopted a constitution, which stipulated that regions should have representatives at the Africa’s athletics body.

As such, Bantsi said CAA-Southern region elected members, who would automatically sit at the higher bodynd his name was put forward.

Asked how the region and Botswana would benefit from the latest development, he said he would advocate for techical events adding that the region was lagging behind on a number of events such as hammer thorws and pole-vault.

He said South Africa had long volunteered to help the region in technical events adding that IAAF was also worried that Africa was not doing well in the area.

He further said Africa had two centres in Mauritius, which specialises in long jump and another one in Zambia, which could benefit the region.

However, he said the two centres were not effective, but he was optimistic that things would be better since CAA had appointed a new technical director.

“Now, we are going to see a lot of changes, like the increase of competitions in the region and individual countries. That alone will encourage countries to also include technical events,” he said.

Also, he said IAAF had agreed to train journalits who reported on athletics issues.

“I am happy to tell you that IAAF has agreed and it is just a matter of time. We need to train the Fourth Estate, so that we are both at par in the world of athletics,” he said. ENDS