Online Reporter
Ellina Mhlanga
Zimpapers Sports Hub
IN their continuous efforts to transform sport, the African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region 5 are introducing scholarships at the regional Games as part of initiatives to push for excellence.
The idea is to incentivise the podium performance programme and also create a strategy that enables the region’s 10-member countries — Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe — to prepare for major events such as the Olympic Games.
This year’s edition of the AUSC Region 5 Youth Games is due to run from December 4 to 13 in Maputo, Mozambique.
The Games remain important in the development of sport in the region, encouraging young people under the age of 20 to participate in sport and develop towards bigger stages.
AUSC Region 5 chief executive Stanley Mutoya said this is one of the initiatives they are looking forward to this year.
“We are introducing scholarships and so on for our athletes that will break the standards and records that are at Region 5 at the moment, so that we incentivise the Podium Performance Programme, and create a strategy that ensures that we prepare for Los Angeles 2028 as well as Brisbane 2032 (Olympic Games) through the power of our Region 5 athletes,” said Mutoya.
“This is what is coming up in the year. So, we are now going to be having analysts for every sport code that are going to be identifying as part of our Podium Performance Programme, the best athletes that will be within our Games.
“We are engaging with a number of universities and schools, high schools and universities, that are going to be part of the Region 5 Schools Sport Excellence Programme.
“Therefore, once we identify these athletes, then they will be placed in some of these schools.”
The idea is to have the identified athletes placed in schools and universities within their countries since they are dealing with young athletes.
“Our intention going forward is to have such schools and universities at the country level, we know these athletes are still very young.
“Moving them from one country to another may not give us the intended result that we want, so we would rather get a university, let’s say in Zimbabwe which partners with Region 5 . . . If there is an athlete identified in Zimbabwe who is in school, we identify a school in Zimbabwe, where these athletes are going to learn on a scholarship for Region 5.
“We are finalising with a team that is working on this to finalise these schools and universities.”
However, being a pilot project, Mutoya said they are starting small, which will also allow them to monitor and evaluate the programme.
“We are getting to MOUs, we are looking to modalities and so on that are identifying those elements. Of course, we are going to start small because we are just starting.
“We need also to identify what the merits and demerits and so on are, and then we will scale it up as we go in the other editions of the Games,” added Mutoya.
This comes at a time when the AUSC Region 5 has also introduced qualifying standards for the Region 5 Youth Games, starting with the forthcoming edition in Mozambique.
