For the first time in Africa’s history, only seven out of 54 nations do not have a women’s team, a new study has revealed.
The inaugural report on women’s football landscape by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) focused on development and participation, league and competition, and structure and governance.
Findings showed that the greatest progress has been made in terms of development and participation.
There are 4,724 registered female referees, 95 per cent are ages 39 and below, while five per cent are 40 and above.
The referees work in both women’s and men’s matches, with 39 countries reporting a total of 325 female referees who have been assigned to at least one men’s match.
Competitions
“There is also a great improvement in terms of the commitment of under 20 and under 17 teams. We are seeing great improvement in leagues and competitions with 49 of our members having a first division competition for women. Our task will be to ensure that these competitions are strong and sustainable,” added CAF Head of Women’s Football, Meskerem Tadesse Goshime.
The federation President Patrice Motsepe, attributed the progress to the confederation’s commitment to improving women’s football.
“We introduced the CAF Women’s Champions League competition with a prize money of $1.55 million, which is an increase of 100 per cent, and increased the prize money for the Women’s African Cup of Nations from $975 000 to $2.4 million.”
He added: “We developed several programmes for women referees, coaches and administrators in collaboration with our zonal unions and our 54-member associations.”
Women players
Still, there remains a need for proper monitoring in terms of player registration, as the continent only has 150,653 registered women players.
The study was hailed for providing a holistic view of women’s football in the continent and providing reliable baseline data for each member association.
Ms Goshime was confident that from the report findings, programmes and initiatives implemented throughout the region will be measured and evaluated for progress.
Additionally, that the study would serve as a benchmark for designing practical programmes to raise the standard for the women’s football in the continent; while enabling CAF to identify best practices that can be used to educate and inspire other member associations with their women’ football efforts.
