Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) and Botswana Football Association have sourced funds to support grassroots development programmes of women football.

BFA have recently held grassroots festivals for young girls aged between eight (8) and 12 years around the country as the drive to promote women football development continues.

Despite the best efforts of the local footballing governing mother-body, the absence of school sport for the past two years have seen development across various sporting codes hit stagnation. Grassroots and player development is one key pillar under the Women football department strategic plan which is in line with the FIFA women’s development programme.

The strategy focuses on in depth participation and teaching basic techniques of football to the girl child to promote the women’s game and learn life skills through football at a young age. According to the head of women football at Lekidi, Tsholofelo Sethoko, the BFA president Maclean Letshwiti was left impressed by the grassroots festivals held recently and has swiftly moved to engage coaches to take charge of different centers across the country.

To enable long-term and sustainable training, Setlhoko indicated that the BFA leadership has offered to support community coaches with financial support to reward their commitment to the course. “Maclean Letshwiti was very happy and impressed with what he saw in Nhabe and we told him of our challenges relating to the issue of incentives. He positively responded and engaged the BFA CEO, Mfolo Mfolo and they took a deliberate decision to address the matter, they are aware of how the incentives can help us to grow our programmes,” Sethoko said. She further implored the powers that be to resolve the matter surrounding return of school sport as it could be a major catalyst to sports development in the country. “School sport plays an important role in the development of grassroots programmes; without schools it’s very challenging to have development programmes running. What we have done as the BFA, together with Women Football, we have tried to build relationships with schools because that is where children spend most of their time,” she opined. “We have community coaches across our 17 regions and we have engaged with schools to allow them to run our grassroots activities. The BFA supply equipment, cones, balls etc, to enable them to work,” she highlighted. “For these centers to be strong and continuous, we need incentives for our coaches. Our partnership with FIFA through the programme called, ‘women campaign’, which focuses on girls between 8-12 years, we shared with them our challenges regarding a need for incentives and have people working at our centers; and they have agreed to assist us for the next two (2) years. Selected coaches at our grassroots centers will be given incentives,. Gone are the days when people would do things for free and incentives ensure progress and proper monitoring of our development program,” Sethoko explained.

The BFA also through their partnership with Diamond Trading Company Botswana (DTCB) conducted other three (3) festivals in Jwaneng, Selibe Phikwe and Francistown in the past few months with DTCB injecting P150 000 00 onto the exercise. In attendance at the recent Nhabe grassroots festival was the BFA President Maclean Letshwiti, women representative in the National Executive Committee Lobito Ncube, the BFA CEO Mfolo Mfolo, the Chairperson of the National Women Football committee Keeng Mosinyi, the BFA Head of women football, Tsholofelo Sethoko, and the brand ambassador of Grassroots programmes who is also the Vice Captain of the Women Senior National team, The Mares, Nondi Mahlasela amongst others.