The Acting Director in the Ministry of Sports, Gervais Munyanziza, has backed the sitting volleyball national teams to win matches at the 2022 World Sitting Volleyball Championships in Bosnia and Herzegovina from November 4-11.

Munyanziza made the remarks, on Tuesday, October 31, as the men's and women's national sitting volleyball teams left Kigali ahead of the championships.

"We believe in our team and we are very optimistic that they will shine. We know the tough challenge they will face but they should not give up,” Munyanziza said.

"I call upon Rwandans to give them support throughout the tournament. The main task at hand is to ensure that our teams will do better at the World Cup and I believe we can. We have had the best preparations and we believe the teams are set to go and do better.”

The women’s team is in Group C which includes Egypt and Brazil. The men’s team is placed with Egypt, Ukraine, and the Netherlands.

Rwanda’s head coach for both men and women, Mossad Rashad, they are set to play "the toughest matches in our group” and, should they manage to register positive results, then he believes "we will have an easy task.”

"My team is ready to take on any challenger in the competition,” Mossad said.

"We were not afraid of competing against the strong teams, and in the end we have to surprise them because we have to believe that we can perform better at that level.”

It is the second time that the World Championship will have two African countries fielding both the women's and men’s teams. Rwanda and Egypt fielded in both categories in the 2018 edition in the Netherlands.

At that time, the national women’s team finished 11th out of the 15 participating countries, winning three matches against Croatia, Hungary, and Finland.

However, Iran's seven gold medals makes them the most successful men's side. The Netherlands top the women's overall standings with four golds.