Africa-Press – Lesotho. Lesotho is a member of the 10 African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region five countries, and this year is her turn to host the council’s executive meeting and council of Ministers’ meeting to run for two weeks, from yesterday to May 4.
The meetings are held twice a year with the aim to deliberate and shape the future of sports development in the region. AUSC members states are; Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The two meetings commenced with the meeting of two committees being; the Sports for People with disabilities (SPWD) and Women in Sports yesterday. Today the Sports Development Technical Commission (SDTC) is also expected to meet, while the finance and marketing commission meeting will meet tomorrow.
The other meeting will be of the secretariat council (29th-30th April) desk officers (2nd April) and the final meeting by Executive Committee set for 3rd and 4th April.
Speaking at a press briefing held at Avani Lesotho yesterday morning, AUSC Chief Executive Officer Mr Stanley Mutoya mentioned that the council is the sports’ arm of the African Union, with the aim of using sports to achieve peace, integration and unity in Africa and to use sport as a vehicle to encourage people to develop and come together irrespective of colour, economic status, political affiliation, social class, or gender orientation.
He also mentioned that the other mandate of the council is to stand for physical promotion, to ensure that Africa has good infrastructure to host high profiled competitions. Again strive for excellent performance of African countries in elite competitions.
Therefore he said the committees will be looking at the progress that has been made in the promotion of sport in the region while they will also be focusing in the promotion of sport for people with disabilities and women.
He added that some of the issues they will be looking at include the podium performance programme that aims at producing athletes that can win medals at major international events including the Olympics.
On that note, he said they will include the recent past 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in Australia to weigh the region performance. He said it was only Botswana, South Africa and Namibia in Africa who managed to obtain medals, therefore he said they would want to see more African countries getting medals. Meanwhile, Lesotho is set to be the host country for the 2020 AUSC, Under 20 Games after Botswana who are hosting this year December.
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