Bakary Y. Badjie, the minister of youth and sport
By Fatou Sillah
Bakary Y. Badjie, the Minister of Youth and Sports, announced during the validation of the Gambia’s new national sports policy that the ministry will be scaling back on international participation to focus on developing local sports infrastructure.
“Our position as ministry is that we need to invest more in the development of the infrastructure at home and minimize the participation with the hope that in the next three years, four years we will have had some adequate or at least reasonable facilities and be able to develop the talent locally, and we will have a pool of athletes where we can choose from to be able to send them to participate, and they will definitely do well because they will be trained at the country level,”
He emphasized that success in sports is not just about participating, but also about winning medals.
“Sometimes associations will say well we have challenges. Okay, you didn’t win a medal Yes, but you participated. But is not just about participation, participation sometimes comes along with the competition aspect of it and the competition is to win medals and that is where you get the recognition. But if we complain that we couldn’t win because we are exposed to facilities that we were not used to back home then we need to think twice, do I need to participate and not get medals because I’m not exposed to the kind of facilities I see there or do I use that money and develop the facilities so that in the next two, three years I will be able to go out there and be able to do it,” said Badjie.
The minister also highlighted the impact of inadequate infrastructure on the country’s sports performance and talent development over the years.
“Over the decades we have all observed how lack of infrastructure has affected our performance and talent development at the country community level and so our wish in the new policy is that we will be able to raise as many resources as possible to invest in developing the infrastructure,
“but we are also looking forward to having the buying of the associations, which can only be possible if we can minimize our international participation and focus on developing the infrastructure. Because is one budget that is where we get money to pay for Development of infrastructure at the same time to support the association when they write to us to say we want to go to this place to participate in an international competition,” Badjie explained.
He further pointed out the difficult choices the ministry faces in balancing these priorities.
“Sometimes we struggle between what we need to do, is it deny them the money and use it to develop infrastructure or give to them to go and the more you spend money on participation, the less you are able to do something at home and if you don’t do people also complain that we are not being supported but strategically if you have one international competition where example you are spending three million of government gives three million I will say that three million can build a basketball or volleyball or tennis lounge or something else somewhere but do we use it for that or do we use it to send a group to go and participate,” he said.