31 March 2025 – The South African Football’s (SAFA) Acting Head of Women’s Football, Dawn Lubisi, has launched the highly anticipated Women’s Football Strategy.
Lubisi was appointed to the position on 1 November 2024 and has spent the past few months putting the finishing touches to a document that has been years in the making.
The Women’s Football Strategy is a guiding document that will supervise the continued growth of women’s football in South Africa from grassroots to elite, and local to international, while also ensuring a defined pathway that will see the professionalization of women’s football and create sustainable programs.
The aim of the strategy is to see the supervised and international growth of Women’s Football at all levels while also unlocking the high-performance culture of the national teams and installing the necessary structures to see them succeed beyond continental level.
The Women’s Football Strategy was developed from October 2022 – May 2023 and further revised in late 2024. Various stakeholders, including two FIFA consultants, came together to identify the priority areas and framed the goals and actions that would eventually lay the foundation for the Women’s Strategy. The strategy aims to create a sustainable platform from grassroots to professional level while also continuously empowering girls and women through football.
“The strategy is only the beginning. We can only work to properly execute what we have set out to do and hope the fruit yield true. This is a very exciting time. Personally, I am grateful to be a part of this beautiful history we will be writing together. I am looking forward to this chapter and wish for it to be nothing but successful,” said Lubisi.
“I am both honoured and privileged as a former Banyana Banyana player and manager to have been part of the journey in creating the first-ever SAFA Women’s Football Strategy, from start to finish. It has always been our dream to collaboratively develop such a document — a guiding framework for current and future leaders in women’s football to reference, enabling us all to elevate women’s football in South Africa to its full potential,” said SAFA CEO Lydia Monyepao.
