07 Aug 2023

Minister of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture Tumiso Rakgare has implored sponsors to contribute towards the development of women football as it has the potential to grow sport in the country.

He said collective efforts by stakeholders to develop women’s football at various levels would nurture talent and skills as well as create employment in various areas of football.

Rakgare was speaking at the official opening of the second edition of the Jwaneng Mine General Manager’s Soccer Fiesta on Friday, whose objective is to empower communities through sport development at grassroots level.

The three-day charity event attracted women and men’s professional and social football teams from Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Botswana.

“Last year, our ladies’ national team qualified for the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations and they did very well by reaching the last stage. I think our next diamond is in the women’s football so we really need to do a lot to help our ladies to develop their football for better results,” he said.

He lauded Jwaneng Mine general manager, Koolatotse Koolatotse for the initiative that promoted economic empowerment to communities.

On other issues, Rakgare noted that Botswana’s aspirations to host the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2027 were promising as the visiting CAF delegation was impressed by the facilities they had toured.

“I received feedback that they are very impressed with our facilities such as Francistown stadium, hotels and health facilities,” he said.

He said hosting such events would contribute towards growing sport and constructing more state-of-the-art facilities for the benefit of the athletes.

He also said this would come with investment opportunities which would create jobs for Batswana. However, the minister acknowledged that developing football was a mammoth task since it needed multi-sectoral approach.

“Developing football is not an easy task because there are so many stakeholders.

You need the business community, government and other stakeholders to partner with to develop football,” he noted.

For his part, Koolatotse said he was optimistic that the initiative would continue to grow in leaps and bounds over the years, due to the high support for football.

Subsequently, he appealed to sponsors to play a role in contributing towards realizing this dream.

He also underscored the need to invest in empowering referees as another way of growing football in the country.

He noted that empowering referees would address unethical practices such as match-fixing, which distorts the beauty of the game. Meanwhile, Jwaneng Galaxy were crowned champions of the fiesta and walked away with a trophy and P75 000 while the runner-ups, Bantu FC of Lesotho got P50 000. Zimbabwean side, Bulawayo Highlanders FC settled for third position which attracted P30 000, followed by Jwaneng Fighters who got themselves P20 000.

In the women’s game played on Friday night, Jwaneng Galaxy beat Bulawayo Highlanders 3-0 to walk away with a trophy and P50 000 while the Zimbabwean side got P30 000. ENDS