The president of the National Olympic Committee Valens Munyabagisha says the government should prioritise and invest in sporting disciplines which the country has a competitive advantage in to excel at continental and global competitions.

In 2010, the government said it would give priority to five sporting disciplines which include; Football, Basketball, Athletics, Paralympics and Cycling.

However, Munyabagisha says that those choices were made based on how popular they are and not where the country has a higher chance of winning silverware in continental and international competitions.

He gave an example of South Sudan whereby its government has developed a model to pool over 300 youngsters in the Basketball game with a vision to prepare them into future basketball stars.

"Don’t be surprised if they become NBA stars,” he warns.

The same, according to Munyabagisha, should apply in Rwanda and added that the government should not only prioritize sports disciplines that Rwandans have a competitive advantage but also develop a sports model that can be used to detect, nurture young talented Rwandans in those disciplines.

"We need to hire an expert to analyze our sports’ potential and design a sports model that we can use to give orientation to our sports policies,” he said.

Sports development at Grassroots level

The public, media and even government is increasingly growing impatient with Rwandan football especially by the senior national football team which has been performing poorly despite taking the lion’s share in the sports budget.

The country thought a golden generation had finally come in 2011 to succeed the AFCON 2004 history boys and save the future of the national team after earning a historic U-17 World Cup qualification in Mexico following good performances during the 2011 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations held in Rwanda.

Amavubi U-17 finished as the tournament’s runners-up after losing to Burkina Faso in the final.

However, after the World Cup, all eyes were on Ferwafa to see if they would establish a long-term youth football structure and policies that encouraged stakeholders to set up academies, a move that would help the youngsters reach their full potential and create a pathway for new talent.

Until now, football at youth level is non-existent and numerous attempts to start it has failed.

Because Rwanda does not have a sports model, he said, some players get senior national team call-ups without passing through any of the U-15s, U-18, U-20, U-21 or U-23 development stages because they don’t exist.

"It is like seeing a primary school student skipping secondary school and going straight to university. It shouldn’t go this way. "If you can’t expect a medal in Basketball, in Football at the Olympic Games, and our players are winning medals in Cycling, in Athletics and Beach Volleyball, then the government should be building a sports model around medal-winning disciplines,” he suggested.

Didier Shema Maboko, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Sports told Times Sport that, through the recently unveiled sports in school policy, the government and stakeholders are working together to ensure the discovery of many young talented Rwandans in schools.

He revealed that the Ministry of Sports together with the Ministry of Education, are looking at how federations can be involved in its sports development agenda by deploying coaches in different sports talent detection activities to create a platform for children to showcase their talents.

"The Ministry’s sports development agenda mainly focuses on nurturing children’s talents from where they are based on a daily basis. The technical work here can be done by federations and then the government can support them whenever it matters,” Maboko said.

Evaluation

Munyabagisha also calls on the Ministry to design a monitoring and evaluation system of its sports’ policy from which all concerned sports stakeholders meet periodically to discuss the progress of the policy implementation.

Besides availing sports facilities, the ministry normally helps federations to get partners and support them whenever it matters but only if they present a clear and long-term policy line of how they plan to detect, nurture and develop raw talents vis-à-vis the ministry’s policy.