Following an extensive research and survey across the continent, CAF has released the first CAF Women’s Football Landscape with the aim of providing a holistic view of women’s football in Africa and providing reliable baseline data for each member association.
The inaugural CAF Women’s Football Landscape Report collected information from CAF Member Associations (MAs) until December 2022 in three (3) key areas: Development and Participation, League and Competition, and Structure and Governance.
The vision is to use this report to:
• Give women’s football concrete data and statistics to be used for future references.
• Measure and evaluate progress as programs and initiatives that are implemented throughout the region.
• Design practical programs to raise the standard for the women’s football in the continent.
• Enable CAF to identify best practices that can be used to educate and inspire other MAs with their women’ football efforts.
A survey was developed and used to collect data from Member Associations. 52 of the CAF’s 54 MAs participated in providing the necessary data through the survey.
CAF Head of Women’s Football, Meskerem Tadesse Goshime, said: ‘’The Women’s Football Department is delighted to introduce the first report on women’s football landscape. This will be a great tool for the department as it strives to further develop and grow women’s football in Africa.’’
She added: “We can see that great progress has been made in terms of development and participation with 47 MAs having a senior women’s national team. There is a need for proper monitoring in terms of player registration, as the continent has only 150,653 registered women players. The data also show that these players are young, with more than 70% of them being under 20 years old. There is also a great improvement in our MAs in terms of the commitment of women’s U-20 and U-17 teams. We are seeing great improvement in leagues and competitions with 49 MAs having a first division competition for women. Our task will be to ensure that these competitions are strong and sustainable.”
The report consists of two parts: First is the Key Findings that summarizes all the data and provides an overview of women’s football on the continent.
The second part titled MEMBER ASSOCIATIONS details information specific to each Member Association and the activities in Women’s Football.
To download the full report, click here.
Future benchmarks will be set following the findings in the three key areas mentioned above. CAF will commit to producing another landscape report in future years to measure progress across strategies.
