African Games: Cameroon delegation en route to Brazzaville

The Cameroonian delegation to the 9th edition of the African Games leaves Cameroon today for Brazzaville-Congo.

The delegation will be leaving today in two shifts according to the flight schedule, the first part of the delegation will leave at 10 am and the other will leave later in the afternoon at 3 pm via the Yaounde-Nsimalen international airport.

The delegation was originally scheduled to leave yesterday but there was a change in the programme due to the unavailability of flights. Due to the change of programme, a planned send-off meeting between the Minister of Sports and Physical Education and the athletes had to be cancelled as some of the athletes are requested to be at the airport as early as 6 am.

The Cameroonian delegation comprises 285 people, 174 of them athletes and will be participating in 12 sports disciplines namely; athletics, basketball, boxing, weightlifting, handball, feminine football, judo, karate, wrestling, power lifting, Taekwondo and volleyball. According to the head of the delegation, Banga Pierre Edmond, Cameroon’s objective during the Brazzaville games will be to do better than they did in Maputo when Cameroon emerged 8th with 33 medals.

He disclosed that despite budgetary concerns, athletes who were given a daily Olympic bonus of FCFA 5000 while in camp in Cameroon will receive FCFA 150,000 as acclimatization bonus which is a novelty. This is in addition to the FCFA 500,000 offered them as qualification bonus.

Winners will receive FCFA 2 million for the gold medal, 1.5 million for the silver medal and one million for the bronze medals. All these bonuses he said are subjected to a 16.5 per cent reduction as tax.