Malawi wins big from Empowerment Programme as volleyball becomes third most popular sport

Good things take time and such is the story of the growing popularity of volleyball in Malawi thanks to the transformational FIVB Volleyball Empowerment programme.

The Southern African nation is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Volleyball Empowerment since 2020, when the FIVB first sent equipment support including 100 Mikasa Kids volleyballs and both indoor volleyball and beach volleyball material.

The initial CHF 11,000 investment was followed by three- and 12-months coach support in 2021 and 2022 respectively, totaling an investment of CHF 90,000. The support saw FIVB Instructor Thulani Maphosa conduct various coaching courses in the country to achieve the knowledge transfer objective of the programme.

With the help of Volleyball Empowerment, the sport has seen tremendous growth in terms of popularity. According to Volleyball Association of Malawi President James Kaunda, volleyball is now the third most popular sport in the country behind football and netball.

“The future of any sport is the youth. When we first received the equipment support for kids’ volleyballs, we had to think of a way to get kids to play volleyball from a young age. Initially, we distributed the balls to schools and local academies but this was not enough.

“The interest among the kids was growing as they now started choosing volleyball over other sports. However, we realised that most teachers and grassroot coaches didn’t have the knowledge to impart basic volleyball skills to them,” explained Kaunda.

Grassroots coaches follow a coaching course conducted by FIVB Instructor Thulani Maphosa seconded to Malawi through FIVB Volleyball Empowerment Programme (Photo credits: VOLLEYBALL ASSOCIATION OF MALAWI)

Over the last two years, Thulani’s coaching courses have solely targeted grassroots coaches and primary school teachers.

“After the coaching courses, every coach was given balls to take to their various schools or academies. This new method of distributing the balls has worked well for us since in every centre we now have a trained coach and enough equipment to nurture talent,” noted Kaunda.

Kaunda noted that volleyball is now being talked about in the same breath as football which is a huge achievement for the sport.

“In the capital city Lilongwe, people have started appreciating the popularity of volleyball. It has also picked up in the other two big cities of Mzuzu and Blantyre. This shows that with more support from government and corporates, it’s just a matter of time before we overtake netball and become the second most popular sport,” asserted Kaunda.

All the details of the FIVB’s Volleyball Empowerment and development programmes are available through the Data Visualisation Tool that can be accessed here.