AFP Foundation
Up to 100 African women sports reporters have begun receiving professional training in a programme sponsored by FIFA, football’s world governing body.
The training is provided by the AFP Foundation, a non-profit-making organisation set up by the international news agency AFP.
Courses started on Thursday in Dakar and in Nairobi and will continue into the spring of 2011, before the start of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Germany on June 26.
The trainees are all members of the African Women Sports Reporters Union and represent a total of 21 countries. Courses will be given in English, French, Arabic, Spanish or Portuguese, by sports journalists from AFP’s African bureaux or its Paris headquarters.
The programme builds on the FIFA’s “Win in Africa with Africa” initiative, launched before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, when almost 250 African reporters and photographers were trained by the AFP Foundation.
FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter said: “FIFA is very happy to continue the cooperation with the AFP Foundation to train African sports journalists. With projects like this the ‘Win in Africa with Africa’ programme is made even more sustainable.
With a view towards the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Germany in 2011 – the flagship competition in the women’s game – the actual seminars are dedicated to women’s football, which is why exclusively female sports journalists have been invited.
FIFA will continue to do all it can to use education to make a difference – and to help to build a better future.”
AFP Chairman Emmanuel Hoog added: “I am pleased that the AFP Foundation is again able to train African journalists in partnership with FIFA. Several of the women who took part in the courses which we ran before the 2010 World Cup said they now felt stronger working alongside their male counterparts. This new programme is designed not only to enhance the skills of women journalists but also to raise their status in the African media – a noble goal which corresponds to the mission of our Foundation.”
Each of the trainees has been invited to attend a four-day, mainly theoretical, workshop before the end of the year, to be followed by a four-day practical session early in 2011.