National Sports

Ministry justifies Flames’ huge funding

Despite dominating government subventions for decades, the Malawi National Football Team has nothing to show for as its downward spiral continues.

The Flames enjoy the highest allocation from the Malawi National Council of Sports at the expense of other teams that have shown potential to excel such as the Malawi Queens and the Scorchers.

Have been perennial under-achievers: The Flames

For years, the Queens have consistently qualified for major tournaments such as the World Netball Cup and Commonwealth  Games.

Similarly, the women’s football team, the Scorchers, shone brightly last year by winning the Cosafa Women’s Championship, but have been inactive for a year and denied participation in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) and Olympics qualifiers due to “lack of funding”.

On the other hand, FAM got K760 million for the Flames’ 2026 World Cup qualifiers against Sao Tome and Principe and Equatorial Guinea.

While the Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) were given only K300 million after submitting a K700 million budget to government.

Minister of Youth and Sports Uchizi Mkandawire admitted that the Flames have not been bringing positive results, but defended the preferential treatment.

He said: “It is true that being its mandate, government through the Ministry of Youth and Sports, has been allocating more resources to men’s senior national football team than the women’s football team and the Queens.

“This is because, among others, it is liked by  the majority and it is, therefore, used to unite people, reduce stress among citizens, promote tourism and generate revenue and forex.

“However, due to poor performance, the country has not benefitted much and other sports have been disadvantaged. There is need to review our football development strategy to achieve value for money.”

Mkandawire said women’s football has not enjoyed much support because it is a relatively new sport.

He said: “Women’s football is a sport that is just growing, but has great potential as demonstrated by our Scorchers. Government will see to it that women’s football is being promoted and supported.

“The netball team has been the second [to  the Flames] in terms of financial support. Their main problem has not been resources, but lack of focus on grass roots development as NAM’s [Netball Association of Malawi] focus has been international participation.

“This created a transitional gap between grass roots and elite levels where no new talent was identified and nurtured to replace ageing players.”

The minister said going forward, his ministry and Sports Council are developing talent identification and development guidelines to harmonise the talent identification process across all sports disciplines.

Football Association of Malawi president Fleetwood Haiya, speaking on the sidelines of the unveiling of the Fifa Technical coach for Luwinga Inclusive Academy Thabo Senong, admitted that the Flames have been struggling despite being the most sponsored team.

He said: “It goes down to lack of proper structures at grass roots level. That’s why in my manifesto and strategic plan, I made it a priority to focus on grass roots football.

“Apart from the Luwinga Inclusive Academy, we are establishing schools of excellence in each region where the best players in secondary schools will be pooled together for further nurturing and monitoring.”

Haiya said with proper structures at grass roots level, Malawi will be able to qualify in each edition of  Afcon.

In a recent interview, NAM president Vitumbiko Gubuduza admitted that due to lack of structures at grass roots level, the Queens have failed to keep up momentum.

She said: “We have come up with a strategic plan in which our overall objective is to transform the game. In our plans, we want to establish an academy where young girls can be nurtured into good players and learn from the legends of the game such as Mary Waya, Mwawi Kumwenda-M’bwana and Peace Chawinga-Kalua, among others.

“These academies will also provide a platform where we can lecture on the importance of education and a healthy lifestyle. But to achieve this, we need government as well as corporate support.”

In response to the needs for resources, Mkandawire said they are currently reviewing sports resource mobilisation strategies to support sports management guidelines to efficiently utilise the available resources.

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