CS Namwamba to sign agreement on sports development with Morocco
Kenya is set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kingdom of Morocco in areas of sports development and creative arts.
Sports Cabinet Secretary Ababu Namwamba together with his Moroccan counterpart Chakib Benmousa held bilateral talks in Rabat on Monday and agreed on areas of partnership that would interest both parties.
The two gave a nod on the establishment of an MoU between Kenya and Morocco to provide a formal arrangement for the salient cooperation.
CS Ababu elaborated the need for the two nations to band together, noting that Kenya stood to gain from Morocco’s advancement in football talent, infrastructure development and management, while also offering Morocco with an opportunity to exploit Kenya’s prowess in athletics, volleyball and rugby.
“We have had a fantastic bilateral meeting; of course this is in the spirit of the already existing very warm relationship between Kenya and Morocco. Now we want to use sports to deepen our friendship. We have agreed that we will have a Memorandum of Understanding to formalize the arrangement and to cement this relationship. This will cut across many fields, different sporting disciplines from football to athletics, volleyball and rugby where we all have mutual interests,” Ababu told People Sport.
Ababu further noted that the engagement with Morocco would majorly be based on talent development from the schools ecosystem since both countries have knitted a deliberate and intentional system of identification, nurturing and monetization of sporting and creative arts talents.
“This agreement will extend to schools because both our countries have very strong programs on developing talents from schools. Morocco has a very good, established network in the area of nurturing talents from schools and Kenya has just rolled out the Talanta Hela Initiative which is firmly anchored in schools that is going to be the major part of the agreement.”
The country is also looking forward to learning from Morocco in the area of hosting major continental and global events with the north African nation set to stage the next African Cup of Nations tournament next year as well as the 2030 FIFA World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal. Kenya on the other hand is preparing for AFCON 2027 in collaboration with neighbors Uganda and Tanzania.
