[ad_1]
Football badociations in the Cosafa region will no longer have to travel to Zurich in Switzerland to solve their development problems after FIFA opened a regional office on Wednesday at Safa House in Johannesburg.
Fifa, through its prospect program, is helping its member badociations to support their development at the grbadroots level and the launch of Southern Africa's regional offices in Johannesburg will accelerate the funding of badociations in need.
"The office will serve as a link between the member badociations of the Cosafa region and Fifa to ensure execution as part of the provisional program," said David Fani, the man in charge of managing the regional office of Johannesburg.
Fani, former president of the Botswana Football Association, said his role would be to facilitate compliance by the member badociation with the requirements of the program and also ensure that the applications for funding submitted by the badociations are properly processed.
"We will therefore make it easier to complete a project until it is completed.
"We are dealing with Fifa members at the badociation level.
"From application to program implementation, we will manage the project to ensure it is completed on schedule."
Fani said the centrality of Johannesburg compared to other areas of Cosafa was the main reason why Fifa decided to install its offices at Safa House.
"FIFA has ten such offices and very soon there will be eleven regional offices in strategic locations.
"In Africa, we will have three, but currently we have two, which is one in South Africa and Dakar, Senegal. The third will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
"The choice of office is based on its optimal functioning in badociations serving members.
"So the positioning has been deemed strategic for the office here in South Africa, because SA is the hub and it is much easier to reach for many countries because of the large number of flights to Johannesburg."
Safa's chairman, Danny Jordaan, said his badociation was delighted to have had the opportunity to host FIFA.
"This office will help badociations in particular to access development funds," Jordaan said.
"Starting next year, FIFA will have five million dollars available for each national badociation.
"This means that you need to develop strong development programs and very often, in the past, only badociations with the ability to prepare a proposal received funding.
"This office will provide this service. So it's a huge opportunity for the region.
"Now, if I want to talk to the office, I'll just go down. I do not have to go to the airport, catch the plane and go to Zurich. "
[ad_2]
Source link
