Dear Handball friends,

The VII th and  XVIII th  Male Youth and Juniors Africa Nations Championships will be  very huge moments of emotions in the calendar of the competitions of 2012.

So, from 20th to 27th August and from 27th August to 03rd September the << Future’s International Stars>> the born in 1994 for the Youth and 1992 for the Juniors  will compete in Abidjan and will serve us some great Handball time.

Côte d’Ivoire had already shown its quality of organizing country and the Ivorian Handball Federation is well prepared. I am sure that it will organize a wonderful Youth and Juniors CAN, thanks not only to its experience but also thanks to its own sports history punctuated by some great sports personalities and its competent leaders.

The hall of the Sports Palace of Treichville totally restored will be the playing venue.
So the entertainment is guaranteed and some new talents will reveal themselves in Abidjan.  But before all that event, I would like to express my wish, as we are all concerned by the backgrounds of the competitiveness and attractivity of our discipline which more and more grows to reach a bigger recognition.

In fact, in some cases, it has become all too clear that some difficulties that we faced during the young people’s championships and which seem to become some worrying subjects have got a source in the manipulations of the ages. I think that it is in the common interest to observe as much as possible a kind of exemplarity in the practices.

For me, it is  good to favor the implementation of  a virtuous circle for the selection of the players who participe in the  competitions according to their categories in order to  win their trust and to enable the technicians measuring without any risk of error their real level of progression, performance and competitivity.

That ambition requires not to miss the objective in the duration   which consists in having by all means some talents at the end of service in a championship, but to work for the ongoing training of young players in order to fertilize our pools and carry out a qualitative renewal of the players. These programmes are already in course in many Federations that I encourage by the way. It is the condition of the development for the access to the excellence. 

I wish you all a good competition.

Mansourou AREMOU.
President.