The Minister of Sports and Culture Joseph Habineza has urged sports federations to focus on empowering grassroots identification so as to have competent sportsmen and women in future. 

Habineza made the remarks on Tuesday after meeting presidents of all national sports federations and associations at Amahoro National Stadium.

He said: "We should lay strategies that assist in producing young and capable players because at the moment we don’t have any. You should go down to the grassroots and identify young players, who will be productive for the country in future.”

Habineza urged the federations and associations to work closely with the Rwanda schools sports federation by preparing a long term strategy. He gave them until end of November to have completed the ‘homework’.

The meeting also emphasised the need to have a programme to identify talented young players at the grassroots and to improve the capabilities of coaches. Also, federations without legal status were urged to sort out that before the end of November.