CAF President Ahmad vows to accelerate development of regional bodies in Africa

CAF President Ahmad Ahmad has vowed to devolve more powers to regional bodies in Africa to help accelerate the development of football on the continent.

This is in fulfilment of his promise that more powers will be ceded from the CAF headquarters to ensure the zonal unions are made more effective through organising more competitions.

The Malagasy made the revelation during the Extraordinary General Assembly of WAFU Zone A in the Senegalese capital of Dakar on Monday.

This is the latest of the regional bodies' meeting Ahmad is attending following the successful roll-out of the regionalised qualifiers for the Africa U17 Championship.

This comes as the various zonal unions are wrapping up the hosting of their respective U17 regional championships to select winners to play in the tournament in Tanzania next year.

Ahmad has taken a hands-on approach and has already attended the zonal meetings of COSAFA, CECAFA, Central Zone with the WAFU B meeting taking place over the weekend in Niger being last before today's event in Dakar.

The new concept ensures that, backed and funded by CAF, all the regional bodies organise their respective U17 competitions with the winners qualifying for the tournament to be held in Tanzania.

The strategy is to get the regional bodies to operate more efficiently by taking charge and organising more competitions to promote development on the ground.

“As CAF, our aim is to decentralise some of the powers to the zones to ensure growth and progression because I always respect commitment," Ahmad said.

“We don't want too much concentration of power in one place that is why we want the zones to be empowered to improve visibility of football in Africa."

To make sure these plans work, new statutes for the zonal bodies of CAF have been adopted to ensure that these changes are backed legally by institutionalising them.

President Ahmad explained that these new statutes aim to improve the organization and the functioning of the zones which has received the ringing endorsement of the zonal unions.

"We also have reforms in all the zones by changing the format and validating the statutes to be in tandem,” Ahamd told delegates.

WAFU B unanimously accepted the statues as all the six countries present approved it except Benin who were not in attendance.

The members present in the meeting in Niamey were Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria and Togo.

WAFU A also accepted adopted the proposals on Monday as Africa coasts to a new strategy of implementing the reforms to make the zonal unions more effective.