The ITU Anti-doping team would like you to be aware of the tremendous strides being made in Africa recently. According to their website, WADA and the Fondation Internationale Olympafrica launched the first activity of their education partnership last week by holding a training workshop for staff from five Olympafrica Centers during the Samsung Regional Youth Games in Lusaka, Zambia.

WADA Regional Director for Africa, Mr. Rodney Swigelaar, and Education Manager Jennifer Sclater from the WADA head office in Montreal, ran the workshop from Aug. 23-25 with the goal of improving the anti-doping knowledge of the Centers’ staff and to introduce WADA’s range of educational tools.

Olympafrica is an organization set up in 1990 to promote the ideals of the Olympic Movement across the Africa continent. It has 19 centres already operating across the region and another 14 under construction.

The workshop allowed WADA and Olympafrica to make a first assessment of the overall anti-doping needs of the Olympafrica Centers and develop a suitable approach for implementing a formalized strategy for the future.

Two hundred young athletes were in Lusaka for the Regional Youth Games (Aug. 23-27), and the first workshop focused on the education and delivery of messages to this age group as well as to their coaches and teachers. Staff from the Olympafrica Centers in Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia attended the workshop.

Prior to the workship, Mr. Swigelaar said, “This will be the first workshop in the partnership between WADA and Olympafrica and we very much look forward to working with the Centers’ staff and developing a program for the future.”

ITU applauds WADA’s relationship with Olympafrica . If you have any questions about ITU’s anti-doping programme, please contact {encode=“leslie.buchanan@triathlon.org” title=“leslie.buchanan@triathlon.org”}.