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Adama and Denver’s adventures – Since January, 2016, Adama Bakhoum and Denver Wannies moved a little bit away from World Rugby to get closer from the regional association : Rugby Africa.

Adama, native of Senegal, joined the team as a full-time contractor while from South Africa Denver’s services are hired on a part-time basis.

Their mission this year will not be fundamentally different from the previous years. Their job has always been about coordinating the training activities and  analyzing the unions’ needs. Today, they want to ensure a closer, more regular and continental follow-up. From now on, Adama will have a coordinator’s role and will delivering some trainings while Denver will have a more operational role and will be involved almost  in the delivery of World Rugby’s and Rugby Africa’s trainings.

This job reorganization will enable them to work on a more formal basis with our Regional Development Officers and to roll out  a more integrated training and development policy.
Development and Training go hand in hand and therefore the roles are well distributed between the Regional Training Managers (Adama and Denver) and the Regional Development Officers (Charles, Berthin, Erick and Mostafa). The projects are simply better implemented with the joint involvement of both the RTM and the RDO.

The objectives of the new year are varied. First and foremost, Rugby Africa will assist the 8 top African unions in setting up a training plan with a medium term vision, training high-level technicians in match officiating, coaching, strength and conditioning and medical. It will then be important to identify the appropriate human resources concerned by the program and to supervise them. Following this, high quality training in line with the agreed upon  unions’ operational plans is a must. The same unions will be helped and supported by specialists.

Clearly this  is a long-term job requiring close collaboration and teamwork in Rugby Africa’s staff so that we might be able to meet the unions’ needs in terms of training and education which are growing substantially with  the development of Women’s Rugby and of the Get Into Rugby program.