Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Namibia Volleyball Federation (NVF) president Hillary Imbuwa says the long-awaited memorandum of understanding (MOU) with their Moroccan counterpart is far from seeing the light of day due to delays following talks in December 2019.
The process was passed on to the attorney general and then the deputy director of sport Jo-Ann Manuel, he says. The NVF communicated with Manuel’s office, only to be informed that it will be finalised “very soon”.
This follows similar promises in the past which never came to fruition, Imbuwa says. The MOU was referred to the attorney general office for political backing but it has since been two to three years of inaction. Due to it being an international matter, the process had to go through the attorney general, sports ministry and the Namibia Sports Commission (NSC).
“If the MOU gets finalised, we will be able to send the envisaged national teams, administrators and technical staff to Morocco, but if is is not finalised, we will look at the MOU and see which programmes can we implement in the areas of cooperation,” Imbuwa says.
LACK OF NATIONAL TEAMS Namibia has had no national senior volleyball teams over recent years, which has been a headache for Imbuwa. When looking at the leagues, the crop of players are aged between 19- and 25-years-old, an age group the international volleyball body would be willing to support in terms of the development programme.
Imbuwa says the NVF lacked a strategic plan as required by the sport ministry and the NSC and that in order to professionalise volleyball, they had to start from the basic level.
“To drive the vision and the strategic plan, we had to bring in an experienced team. That is why we brought in Donald Doeseb as the federation’s CEO, who understands the mission to make volleyball as a sport visible.”
The mandate of the federation is to grow capacity across the country by setting up structures in the regions and drive regional programmes through associations. The NVF has eight association affiliates and with the developmental programmes through the technical director’s office, were able to address capacity challenges.
Imbuwa added that the idea behind establishing regional associations was to decentralise volleyball and not run the sport from Windhoek, as had been the case in the past.
“We have the strategy guiding the executive direction in implementing programmes, though we lacked a policy document in the past, we can now effectively pride ourselves with a policy document and a governance document in our quest to professionalise the sport.”
Imbuwa revealed that the 2022 volleyball season will kick off with the Swakopmund Beach Open as part of the 31st Independence celebrations, followed by the Doc Tournament on 10 and 11 April at Swakopmund.
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