Rugby Africa has disbursed €276,490 to 11 affiliates on the continent to enable them to prepare for the 2021 after a difficult 2020 rugby season.

The fund will enable 11 of the 39 Unions – Namibia, Kenya, Uganda, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Zambia, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Ghana – start preparations for the new season. 

A very targeted approach has been taken to ensure that funds are allocated where they will have the greatest, immediate impact and highlights the attractiveness of Rugby Africa competitions

Khaled Babbou President of Rugby Africa said, “This is an exciting day for rugby on the continent. It clearly illustrates Rugby Africa’s support for its unions. We have been through extraordinary challenges this year and it is essential that we do everything possible to keep this much – loved sport alive and striving in Africa.”

Forty per cent of the fund will go to development of the sport. This includes the strength and development level of domestic competitions and the existing support workforce necessary to develop clubs and leagues in a country. A union development questionnaire (using a scoring tool developed by World Rugby) was used in consultation with each union.

Sixty per cent of the fund scored on performance, which focuses on participation and results of Rugby Africa unions during the 2018 or 2019 season. The competitions are rugby cup for men and women, sevens for men and women and the U20 Barthès trophy

Depending on their scores, Unions are eligible to receive between €43,736 and €5,027 as part of the Fund. Rugby Africa staff will work closely with the Unions to draft a program to be presented to Senior Management and EXCO for approval before release of the funds which is expected early in 2021.

“We are very comfortable with the robust judging criteria used to ensure the fairness of the process and how much each Union will receive,” said Steph Nel, the rugby service manager for Africa, and world rugby.

The 11 recipient unions will carefully consider their areas that need the most urgent development or improvement. This could be for example the restart of the domestic leagues, training camps for the national teams to properly prepare ahead of the international rugby teams.

Some of the unions may require to bolster the staffing of the national teams, and with the Olympic games in the near future, use the funding to pay for participation in the preparation tournaments.

Vice-president of Rugby Africa Andrew Owor observed, “We have all lived in unprecedented times this year due to the pandemic. One could never have imagined that globally, all sporting events would be shut down for a number of months.

Without the much-needed cash injection, it would have been impossible to see the restart of our competitions, for them to be competitive and to put the players in the best possible position to play entertaining rugby that fans have so sorely missed.”

This fund is different from the emergency solidarity fund that saw the Rugby Africa disburse €117,000 to each of the 31 unions for immediate food and medical relief. It assisted the most vulnerable communities with food parcels and buy face-masks sanitisers and medical supplies for clubs.

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