Rwanda’s Sports and Culture Minister Joseph Habineza has defended the local private sector for not getting involved in the Africa Youth Championship, Rwanda 2009.

When a nation organizes such a major competition, it goes without saying that the private sector would jump at the opportunity to be part of the whole project but that’s was not the case with Rwanda and this year’s continental youth tournament.

Rwanda is staging the event, the first of its kind on her soil for the first time ever and inevitably you would hope that private firms would cherish the prospect of associating with it.

So when none of the prominent local privates firms appeared on the list of the tournament’s official sponsors or partners, it came as a shocker but Minister Habineza has exonerated them of any bad intentions or luck of desire to come on board.

"We have a big problem with the private sector not wanting to get associated with sports but as far as this tournament is concerned, none of them is to blame for not coming on board.

"There are some like Ecobank and Bralirwa through their Coca Cola brand that had really shown interest in being partners but they were blocked by SportFive, who have the exclusive rights to this competition,” revealed Habineza.

SportFive blocked Ecobank and Coca Cola because they already had another bank and another soft drinks partners in Standard Bank and Pepsi respectively. Standard Bank, Pepsi, Samsung and Nasuba express are the tournament’s official sponsors.

"So, it’s not luck of desire that there is no single local firm on board for this competition but they had their hands tied,” explained the Minister.

Meanwhile, Rwanda is the only team of the eight countries at this tournament that is not ranked in the top 20 of African national U-20 teams in 2008.

Nigeria tops the list, followed by Ghana, Mali (4th), Egypt (6th), Cameroon (8th), Ivory Coast (9th) and South Africa are ranked 11th. Sudan is ranked 18th, 2007 winners Brazzaville are 5th, Gambia 3rd while Senegal are 20th.

In the last ten editions, the host nation have won the trophy only on four occasions; Egypt (1991), Morocco (1997), Ghana (1999) and Congo Brazzaville.

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