The revolution is underway in African sport. In 2022, the continent will organize an Olympic event for the first time, the Summer Youth Games. They are promised to Senegal. Before that, its association of national Olympic committees, ANOCA, could entrust a woman with the keys to the presidential office.
Lydia Nsekera, the president of the Burundi Olympic Committee, announced last weekend her decision to run in the next presidential election. It is scheduled for November 29, 2018 in Tokyo, on the sidelines of the annual general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC). The African leader declared this during a press conference in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.
“I want to inform you that if my colleagues place their trust in me, priority will be given to the creation of a climate of trust, to the unification of the continent, but above all to the establishment of the principles of good governance, she explained when lifting the veil on her campaign program. I realized that our continent is suffering from divisions and that it requires new blood to recover. I thought carefully, and given my experience as a manager both nationally and internationally, I believe I can contribute to its recovery."
As a reminder, ANOCA must carry out a new election for president since the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to invalidate the vote of May 2017. The Ivorian Lassana Palenfo, the outgoing, had won the bid. . His only rival, the Cameroonian Hamad Kalkaba Malboum, had been banned from going to the end of the campaign.
But the CAS experts, seized by the beaten, considered his exclusion unfair. They canceled the spring 2017 election and ordered the organization of a new vote. A vote for which Lassana Palenfo ultimately decided not to run.
At 51 years old, Lydia Nsekera enjoys an impeccable reputation in the international sports movement. She has been a member of the IOC since 2009, an institution where she notably chairs the Women and Sport Commission.
In the world of football, his career has already opened the doors to history. In 2004, she became the first woman to president of a national federation in Africa, in her native country, Burundi. Then she did even better at the international level, joining the FIFA executive committee in 2012. Until then, the doors had always remained closed to women.
A size, then. The candidate for unity and recovery. Sufficient ? Not sure. To succeed Lassana Palenfo at the head of ANOCA, Lydia Nsekera will have to remove two other heavyweights of the African sports movement, who entered the campaign before her.
The first is Algerian. Mustapha Berraf, the president of the Algerian Olympic committee, knows the house well. Vice-president of ANOCA, he has served as interim president since the sidelining of Lassana Palenfo. He is said to have the support of the Ivorian soldier. An asset, certainly, as the influence of the African leader remains significant. But, in the same camp, Mustapha Berraf could have difficulty rallying supporters of change.
The other candidate, Hamad Kalkaba Malboum, has recovered since the CAS decision to annul the result of the last election. President of the African Athletics Association, the Cameroonian can count on solid support within ANOCA. He knows how to campaign.
Anything but anecdotal detail: Lydia Nsekera sat on the executive committee of ANOCA which had decided, last year, to exclude Hamad Kalkaba Malboum from the presidential election. Mustapha Berraf was also part of it.
In the event of victory, Thursday November 29 in Tokyo, the Burundian would become the first woman in history to chair a continental association of national Olympic committees.
