CAF VAR Academy: COSAFA concludes successful VAR Workshop in Johannesburg

The Confédération of Africaine Football (CAF) successfully concluded the second CAF VAR Academy workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa this week.

Following CAF’s recent hosting of the most successful TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations that saw the quality of officiating being singled out, CAF is building onto this success with the innovative academy that is currently being rolled out across the continent between September and October 2024.

The successful conclusion of the CAF VAR Academy in South Africa comes at the back of another successful edition held for the WAFU B zone in Cote d’Ivoire last week. 

A total of 14 Elite Referees from across the COSAFA zone underwent the week-long course conducted by CAF’s Football Development department, which entailed the use of VAR Equipment, both in its theoretical and practical formats.

The CAF VAR Academy forms part of CAF’s ongoing efforts of accelerating the development of refereeing in Africa through the effective use of technology and advanced global methods in officiating.

Present at the workshop was CAF Technical Development Director, Raul Chipenda who said emphasised the importance of such programmes for CAF and how it contributes to having more advanced referees that are equipped to officiate with the use of VAR technology.

“To allow a referee to officiate a match with VAR, they need a certain number of hours to do so. With this equipment in the zones and through our partnerships with the zones, we will be in a better position to train our referees and help them officiate more matches with VAR” said Chipenda.

“The main reason of this courses is to increase the number of qualified referees to officiate matches both on the continent and of course globally. More importantly, having such programmes play a vital role in our objective of increasing the number of qualified VAR-qualified referees,” he concluded.

CAF VAR ACADEMY 2024 WORKSHOP DATES: