Nipam tackles sport admin

The Namibia Institute of Public Administration and Management (Nipam) has embarked on a skills upgrade drive to enhance sport governance in the country.

Together with the Namibia Sports Commission (NSC), Nipam believes capacitating federations will improve administration and make the fraternity attractive to investors and the public alike.

“We have touched base with the Namibia Sports Commission to see how we can assist in developing a curriculum in sport governance,” Johannes Hamutele, Nipam’s marketing and business development manager, said earlier this week.

“We’ll be able to equip and transform the federations that are under the sport commission. We’ve engaged with them, and they like the idea.

“They’ve given us a platform to develop the curriculum of sport, which we did, and it as approved by both institutions. We’re now in the first stage of planning to train our first cohort in that area.”

The move is guided by the Maseru 2019 Resolution of the Council of Ministers, NSC chief administrator Freddy Mwiya said.

“The resolution taken was that in southern Africa, to serve in any sport body from 2023 December going forward, a person needs to be certified. We have to start implementing that mechanism,” he said.

He said the incessant squabbles seen in the sport circles is down to a lack of qualifications or stringent prerequisites for administrators, which, in turn hampers the sector’s growth.

“For a number of years we’ve been experiencing a lot of infighting, because most of our federation executives needed some form of training [in governance]. There’s a need for us to capacitate our sport leaders,” Mwiya said.

“So, we started designing a curriculum with our colleagues, which is a tailor-made curriculum, because it talks about our current Sport Act, our constitutional framework as the sport commission, and corporate governance in general.

“We need to separate the powers of the secretariat and executive members who serve any sport body.”

The commission will sponsor the first training on 4 to 6 August, which will consist of 35 presidents and vice presidents.

“We’ll have intensive three-day face-to-face training at Nipam. They’re not getting certificates of attendance, they will be certified as competent leaders to lead sport,” he said.

“Come 2025, before you’re elected to any structure, we need to ensure that compliance in terms of having certain knowledge in sport management must become key.

“You find that in sport, we take anybody on board, and that’s where the problems start.”

Filling that capacity gap is long overdue and a must to ensure Namibia keeps up with modern sport practices, said NSC development officer Salome Iyambo.

“Sport is such a fast-changing industry. You realise that the manner in which we elect our leadership from the constituencies to national level does not really have requirements,” Iyambo said.

“Sport has many issues, it’s not only development, marketing or event management. There’s also sponsorships, data analytics, developing athletes’ pathways to becoming somebody after retirement,” she said.

“Many people do not know the functions they need to execute within the statutes that govern them. It’s worrying.”