Page 15 - MALAWI SPORTS NEWSLETTER

FUNDING, A BIG CHALLENGE

TO SPORTS DEVELEPOMENT

Alide: Associations need more funding

During the two-day Sport Indaba, sport associations cited lack of funding from the government
as one of the factors contributing to dwindling standards of sports in the country. Examples
were given of how neighboring countries, or other countries both in Africa and Europe, are
doing well because governments invest a lot in di erent sporting codes, hence they do well
when it comes to global competitions.

Football Association of Malawi Vice President Jabba Alide gave an example of the Malawi
National Football Team, ‘The Flames’, saying they gave Council a budget of K2.1 billion to
cover events in the 2022-2023 financial year, but that they only received K210 million and that,
currently, they have exhausted their budget while football associations in other country are still
using allocated resources because they got enough allocations from their respective govern-
ments.

“It is true that we are not doing well in a number of sporting disciplines, but that is because the
money being allocated to football and other associations is not enough for people to undertake
di erent developmental programs. In the past, we used to have sports activities in schools,
which led to schools contributing a lot of players to our national teams but, today, sports activi-
ties in schools are not as vibrant as before,” said Alide.

Members of associations at the meeting argued that the money allocated to them is not
enough and that there is a need for government to allocate more money to sports associations
so that they can be in a position to seriously compete sportsmen and women from other coun-
tries.

ISSUE NO: 1 MNCS NOVEMBER 2022 NEWSLETTER 15