18 Mar 2021

African football fraternity says the newly appointed African football governing body under the leadership of Dr Patrice Motsepe will deliver African football to greener pastures through unity.

Speaking during a virtual conversation with Botswana Football Association president, Maclean Letshwiti, Letshwiti said to ensure good governance in football, there should be a traceable financial stability, unity and good face of African football, adding that ‘African football is a marketable product.’

He further said commercialisation, development and professionalism of football needed business minded individuals who would help the federation accelerate to new heights.
Letshwiti noted that as BFA, they opted for Dr Motsepe to represent Africa to find its new hopes in football as business.

“Dr Motsepe is one of the best businessmen in the world, who had transformed Mamelodi Sundowns to become the best team in Africa,” he said.

He further stated that Dr Motsepe would transform the African football into a business centre that could export sport to other continents.

Over the years, football has been the hub for economic transformation in many states around the world, with that alone Letshwiti said football makes over US$20 million, which was expected to double in the next coming years.

He stated that Africa had resources, including players and what was needed was mobilisation of such resources across all African states.

In addition, he said, for football to be successful, CAF as a governing body, should be successful and if not, the member association would not be successful in football business.

Updating media fraternity recently, CAF president Dr Motsepe said football in Africa would surely grow, adding that his worry was the AFCON Cup prize money.

He said he intended calling on the private sector in Africa to work on AFCON to solicit lots of sponsorship to increase the prizes monies for such games.
“As much as Africa has more resources, there are still concerns of players welfare in some African states,” noting that resources in Africa were good enough to make African players becoming highly paid players.

Dr Motsepe make his intentions known of ensuring that one African state would win the World Cup under his leadership. He further said his intentions would be to hold major meeting with CAF member associations twice a year to fasten the developments, as well as coming up with solutions to the African football.

Furthermore, he noted it would be important to make sure that 95 per cent of their discussions during meetings should be about football and finding ways to success. For his part, South African Football Association president, Dr Danny Jordan described 2017 as the worst year for

African Football with 2019 and 2020 loosing over US$20 million because of poor administration.

He added that it was time African football get back to full television broadcast, further urging that television rights should be core business in all CAF member associations.

He further said ‘if Africa is hungry for success,’ they should consider supporting each other and stand together in unity. Ends