Chad became the ninth African member association to benefit from the FIFA Arena Project on Wednesday, with the inauguration of the country’s first FIFA Arena mini-pitch at School 15 in Koumra, southern Chad.
The facility, installed for the Chadian Football Federation (FTFA), is Chad’s first of its kind and brings the global tally of inaugurated FIFA Arenas to 142.
Chad’s government has pledged to install 23 FIFA Arenas nationwide – one per region – with Koumra marking the first phase of that rollout. The Koumra pitch will serve around 5,000 children in a city that previously had no comparable sports facility.
The ceremony was attended by Chad’s Minister of Youth and Sports, Naïr Abakar; FTFA leadership; FIFA Deputy Chief of Member Associations and Regional Director for Africa and the Caribbean, Gelson Fernandes; FIFA Regional Development Manager Franciny Samba-Malanda; and FIFA Arena Project Manager Karishma Inayat.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the project was designed to ensure children from disadvantaged urban and rural areas worldwide ‘get the chance to enjoy and play the sport we all love.’
Minister Abakar said the Koumra facility would help ‘turn every pitch into a space for the future,’ while FTFA President Tahir Oloy Hassan called it ‘another building block in rebuilding our football, from the grassroots all the way to the national team.’
Fernandes said the Koumra Arena reflected the project’s core aim: ‘giving every child, wherever they are, the chance to play, anywhere in the world.’
Chad joins Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Liberia, Morocco, Niger and Rwanda among African member associations to have received FIFA Arenas.