From Harry Awurumibe, Casablanca
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) successfully hosted its high-level Safety and Security Conference Webinar, attracting over 700 participants from across the African continent and beyond.
Held virtually, the event brought together a wide array of stakeholders committed to enhancing safety and security standards within African football.
The webinar served as a critical platform for knowledge exchange, policy alignment, and international collaboration. Participants included CAF Safety and Security Officers, National Safety and Security Officers, and Club Security Officers from First Division clubs across all CAF Member Associations.
The main objectives were to review emerging safety and security challenges in African football, promote alignment of roles, responsibilities, and expectations across all stakeholder levels, share best practices and lessons learned from recent CAF competitions and reinforce the importance of planning, risk mitigation, and incident reporting.
Discussions around the future innovations and decentralization strategies to strengthen local capacity within football were also held.
Key areas for alignment were around venue inspections, joint security meetings, command structures, roles, real-time response, reporting, escalation, documentation, evaluation and lessons learned, and capacity development through training and mentoring.
In addition to the core football security personnel, the conference welcomed distinguished CAF and international guests, who provided input:
Samson Adamu – CAF Director of Tournaments & Events Division
Helmut Josef Spahn – FIFA Director of Safety, Security and Access
Stephen Furnham – Head of UEFA Safety and Security Operations National Associations Division
Brian Johnson – Head of Safety Security & Access, Asian Football Confederation
Valerio De Divitiis – Head of The UNOCT Programme on Major Sport Security and Prevention of Violent Extremism
Massimiliano Montanari – CEO of the International Centre for Sport Security
The session addressed emerging threats, global trends in event safety, and best practices in stadium security and crowd management.
Aside from presentations, there was a panel discussion that included Dr Christian Emeruwa, CAF’s Head of Safety and Security, Ababacar Sene (Match Preparation Standardization, Planning Protocols & Incident Reporting), Xolile Vilakati (CAF Strategic Priorities for Safety & Security) and Zakarihya Diabate (Way Forward: Roadmap for Coordination, Decentralization & Innovation), who are all CAF Safety and Security Officers.
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Dr Emeruwa praised the collaborative spirit and rich engagement during the session:
“The level of participation and the quality of insights shared in the webinar reflect the growing commitment across our Member Associations and partners to prioritize safety and security in African football. This conference is more than just a meeting, it is a signal of our shared dedication to safeguarding the future of the game and protecting everyone who is part of it,” Dr Emeruwa said.
CAF is committed to making the football environment safer and more inclusive by strengthening policies, enhancing collaboration with global partners and equipping its stakeholders with the tools needed to respond to evolving challenges.
The CAF Safety and Security Webinar marks another important milestone in building a unified and resilient security framework across African football.
