Africa Netball is strengthening the financial governance and athlete safeguarding behind women’s sport as it prepares to bring the continent’s leading netball nations to Kenya this September.
At the centre of that work are Treasurer Martha Lungu-Sichone and Vice President Malebo Raditladi-Nkgakile, whose leadership is helping move the conversation around African netball beyond participation and competition towards how the sport is governed, financed and developed sustainably.
The Africa Netball Cup 2026 provides an important test of that approach. As women’s sport attracts increasing attention, Africa Netball is seeking to ensure that growth is supported by stronger institutions, credible financial systems, athlete protection and development pathways capable of creating opportunities beyond individual tournaments.
For Lungu-Sichone, financial governance is fundamental to making that growth sustainable.
“Strong governance is the backbone of any successful sport because it creates trust and accountability across all levels,” she said.
Lungu-Sichone currently serves as Africa Netball Treasurer for the 2024–2027 term following her re-election, continuing a journey in the sport spanning more than four decades.
After beginning as a player, she moved into administration and served as Treasurer of Netball Zambia between 2012 and 2016. She subsequently served as Africa Netball Treasurer from 2016 to 2019 and again during the 2021–2023 term.
Her leadership expanded further when she became President of Netball Zambia from 2020 to 2023.
During that period, Zambia’s senior national team secured a historic Africa Netball Cup victory in 2023, while the Under-21 team qualified for its first Youth World Cup in 2024.
For Africa Netball, experiences of this kind demonstrate why sporting performance and institutional capacity cannot be separated.
“We must ensure that every opportunity for growth is supported by sound financial systems that can sustain it,” Lungu-Sichone said.
Alongside financial sustainability, Raditladi-Nkgakile’s work places athlete welfare and safeguarding at the centre of sports development.
A former multi-code athlete and COSANA-accredited umpire, she progressed into administration through the Botswana National Sports Commission before becoming President of the Botswana Netball Association.
Her tenure included empowering 230 coaches on fundamental coaching principles, licensing 16 coaches and upgrading umpires.
Botswana also secured its first Netball Nations Cup victory in Singapore in 2022 and successfully hosted the Africa Cup in 2023.
Since 2019, Raditladi-Nkgakile has served as Vice President of Africa Netball, while building extensive experience in athlete safeguarding.
Her work stretches from the Africa Youth Games in 2014 to coordinating the NIF Safe Inclusive Sport Programme across Africa and contributing to frameworks for ANOCA Zone VI and AUSC Region 5.
She has also earned IOC safeguarding certification and Train-the-Trainer accreditation and was recognised with the SSI Celia Brackenridge Award for Service to Safe Sport.
Raditladi-Nkgakile served as Welfare and Safeguarding Manager at the 2023 Netball World Cup in Cape Town and as Head of Safeguarding and Youth Programs for the World Athletics Relays Gaborone 2026.
“Athletes must feel safe, supported, and valued because that is where true performance begins,” she said.
Her approach challenges the idea that staging more tournaments or increasing participation is, by itself, evidence of sports development.
Instead, she argues that events need to be supported by governance, compliance, safeguarding and long-term athlete-development systems.
“Events are an opportunity to showcase not only talent but the standards and values that define our sport,” Raditladi-Nkgakile said.
That thinking is particularly relevant as women’s sport enters a period of increasing commercial and public interest.
For Africa Netball, the opportunity is to convert that attention into structures capable of supporting athletes and national federations across the continent.
The Africa Netball Cup in Kenya will provide a continental platform for performance, visibility and digital engagement, but the longer-term impact will depend on what happens around the competition.
“We are seeing growth at all levels of the game and the focus now is to convert that into structured opportunities for athletes and federations,” Lungu-Sichone said.
Raditladi-Nkgakile added: “Growth must be inclusive and it must be protected because the future of the sport depends on how we invest in people today.”
Together, their work represents a shift in how the growth of women’s sport can be measured.
More competitions and greater visibility remain important, but sustainable growth also requires accountable leadership, sound financial management, safe environments for athletes and development structures capable of turning participation into opportunity.
As Africa’s leading netball nations prepare to meet in Kenya, the work taking place behind the competition demonstrates how two women leaders are helping build the systems required for African netball to grow beyond the final whistle.
The revised lead makes the news clearer by linking the two leaders’ roles to Africa Netball’s preparations for Kenya, while the headline can be made more specific by naming the governance and safeguarding shift they represent: Women Leaders Drive Governance and Safeguarding Push Ahead of Africa Netball Cup 2026 rather than “Women Reshape African Netball Leadership.”
