Caf African Schools ch'ship: Big cash prize motivates Royal Giants

Royal Giants director Benon Ntambi and his team celebrate winning the Caf Schools Championship national qualifier.  PHOTO/FRED MWAMBU. 

What you need to know:

The winners of the zonal qualifiers will take home US$ 100,000 (about Sh380m) while the first and second runners up will bag $75,000 (Sh285m) and $50,000 (Shs191m)

Schools that will compete for the Caf African Schools Championship finals have one more reason to push harder after Caf announced the prize money on Sunday night.



The Caf executive committee sat on Saturday in Algiers, Algeria to make an array of decisions, among them designing a formula to split the $ 4 million cash prize money for the schools championship. The money is part of the $ 10 million cash donation from the Caf president Patrice Motsepe's Motsepe Foundation.



The overall winner of the respective boys and girls tournament to be held in March next year will take home $300,000 (shs 1.14 Bn) while the silver and bronze winners will receive $200,000 and $150,000 respectively.



"This is an important and significant step in CAF’s commitment to develop and grow youth and schools football on the African Continent and to pay the winning girls schools the same prize money as the winning boys schools," Caf noted in their communique.



Big motivation


Uganda, which will play host to the Cecafa zonal qualifiers in December will be represented by Royal Giants High School from Mityana and Amus College in the boys and girls category. 



The winners of the zonal qualifiers will take home US$ 100,000 (about Sh380m) while the first and second runners up will bag $75,000 (Sh285m) and $50,000 (Shs191m)



"This is a big motivation to work even harder because that money can help us improve on the infrastructure, " Benon Ntambi, the director of Royal Giants commented about Caf's announcement. 



"However, we're not going to be carried away by that but instead work on developing the players for the future," Ntambi added.



The winning schools will mainly use the prize money to improve their football infrastructure, equipment and educational development courses at those schools.