WITH the 2024 Women’s African Football Cup of Nations (WAFCON) now in full swing, all eyes are on the twelve competing teams who will be resolutely battling to earn the much-desired result, which is of course the highly prized trophy itself.

Indeed, this particular football championship will feature a wealth of talented stars some of whom are on the books of the greatest clubs of global women’s football.

At this vital juncture, it should be noted that the ongoing 2024 WAFCON is happening at a time when the continental women’s game is certainly on the up and up.

With the number of our overseas-based female football greats steadily increasing with each passing season, the level of competition in African women’s football is also being ramped up, which is a decidedly encouraging development for the continental women’s game.

For example, two football juggernauts who have long dominated African women’s football are the all-conquering Nigeria and arguably, perhaps South Africa.

However, it appears that this trend is beginning to change in the favor of new and emerging football powers, who are tired of being in the shade of the Super Falcons (Nigeria’s moniker) and the Banyana Banyana (South Africa’s nickname).

Indeed, some of these swiftly rising football sides include Zambia and the 2024 WAFCON hosts, Morocco, who each has a tremendous zeal to capture glinting pieces of silverware.

Encouragingly, this promising progress in continental women’s football is not only being achieved on the pitch but crucially, off the pitch as well.

The off the pitch strides forward that I was referring to in the aforementioned sentence concern the prize money up for grabs at this year’s momentous WAFCON.

In what was definitely a jaw-dropping announcement that was made merely hours before the 2024 WAFCON was due to kick-off, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) declared that the winners of the whole shebang would receive an eye-popping sum of one million dollars (Yes, that is one million with an M) as the prize money.

It should be kept in mind that this year’s financial reward is arguably vastly greater than the 600,000 dollars, that the former champions South Africa received for winning the last edition of the WAFCON.

Undeniably, this dramatic increase in the tournament’s prize money will serve as an enormous incentive for all contestants at this year’s consequential WAFCON to put their best foot forward.

One hopes then that the undisputed gems of African women’s football will display the seemingly endless range of their magical skills as the competition unfolds over the coming days and weeks.

Let us now switch our focus to local table-tennis, which has dangerously been in a state of near-stagnation on the home front in recent years.

Granted, a local table-tennis championship took place earlier this year on home soil.

Having said that, though, the million dollar question that should be posed is: will this be the only table-tennis tournament that takes place on the local sports scene this year?

An attempt to answer this query does not make for comfortable reading.

Indeed, as table-tennis’ track record in recent years so amply demonstrates, there have been few table-tennis championships that have taken place on an annual basis.

Thus, unless more table-tennis championships can be staged on an annual basis in our country, true improvement will be immensely hard to come by for our local players of this enchanting sport.