ALGERIA
MAURITANIA
GHANA
TOGO
COTE D'IVORE
SENEGAL
"
A few African players have made their
dreams a reality, thanks to the opportunities
put in place by the ITF…
Eliakim Coulibaly has shown
considerable promise
North West
Africa
C L I C K FO R M A P V I E W
DEVELOPMENT
CÔTE D'IVOIRE GHANA
Ivory Coast has been on the
verge of a breakthrough for
many years. Arnaud Segodo, a great
hope of the 1990s, and the N'Goran
brothers Claude and Clément, were
all from Côte d'Ivoire, and now
19-year-old Eliakim Coulibaly is
arguably West Africa's best hope of
a top-100 player. For many years,
the country's tennis infrastructure
was allowed to decay, but the
government has given the national
tennis association responsibility to
manage all tennis facilities in the
capital, Abijan, and the association
has taken a number of abandoned
courts and resurfaced them. With JTI
coordinators responsible for many
of these renovated courts, you don't
have to go far in Abijan to find
good coaching on quality courts.
The work of the Ghanian
tennis federation is currently
being augmented by an
independent initiative led by a
coach/entrepreneur with his own
foundation which organises around
six junior events each year. The
foundation has a national training
centre in Winneba, which in the
global picture is very basic and
quite small, but in the context of
Ghana is really big. There is no big
budget, the JTI sites are run by
volunteers, and the coaches are
living off the subsidy they get
from the Junior Tennis Initiative,
but it is a sizeable start.
