When basketball fans watched Australian Liz Mills at the Kigali Arena dugouts leading Kenya during the just-concluded Afrobasket finals tournament, it was dreamlike to see a woman coaching a men’s team in the continent’s biggest basketball competition.

Mills, is a former assistant coach of local side Patriots who, in 2019, played a crucial role in the club’s qualification to the inaugural Basketball Africa League (BAL), is the first and only woman head coach in the African Basketball Championship (Afrobasket) history.

She may not have inspired the Kenyans the furthest they wanted to reach after bowing out from the group stage, but Mills showed women are just as capable. After all, she guided the Morans to their first Afrobasket finals in 28 years just weeks after she was appointed in February this year.

And it is not a feat that came by chance, having previously served as assistant coach for Zambia during the 2017 Afrobasket qualifiers, and with Cameroon in the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 qualifiers.

With Mills shattering the glass ceiling in continental basketball, could women in various sporting disciplines in Rwanda draw inspiration from her and go on to defy the odds in the male-dominating coaching profession? 

The current situation

A recent survey conducted by Weekend Sport in the top five major sports in Rwanda found out that there are 13 female coaches in football, three in basketball and two in volleyball. Not a single woman holds a coaching license in cycling and athletics.

The numbers are, according to stakeholders in sports, worrying given the fact that women coaches are still few compared to their brothers due to various prejudice barriers they meet along the way, on top of lack of role models, advocacy and training platforms.

Football coach Grace Nyinawumuntu is arguably Rwanda’s most successful female coach, having guided AS Kigali to eight consecutive league titles of the women’s topflight football league between 2010 and 2017.

She is among the 13 female football coaches holding CAF License C. With the qualification, however, she is only eligible to coach clubs and junior teams. The license does not permit her to coach a senior national team.

Presently, she doubles as head coach of the national U-23 women football team and Technical Director of the Paris Saint-Germain academy in Rwanda.

"I want to be a role model for women. I want to inspire them and show that we are also capable in coaching, that we can perform at the same level as male coaches,” she told Weekend Sport.

Backward mindset

Women say there is a bad attitude among stakeholders in the sports industry whose mindset about the ability of women in coaching still leaves them behind when it comes to appointments.

Nyinawumuntu says such a mindset is barring women to break boundaries in coaching as teams think first about men while hiring coaches and women always come as the last option.

"To be honest, if a top men’s team took a chance on me, I am confident I have the capacity to coach it. But because I am just a woman, many teams would probably never think about hiring me. That’s the one big challenge we face in this profession,” said Nyinawumuntu.

Limited capacity building

Women coaches who spoke to Weekend Sport decry that the gender gap in coaching is growing wider and needs a quick intervention.

They say a big number of women is interested in coaching, in different disciplines, but capacity building remains their biggest challenge as some have no foundation in coaching while others miss out on advanced coaching programmes due to financial constraints.

"Women lag behind in coaching because there is a shortage of coaching courses for them. The majority of coaching courses are for those who are already in the system yet there are some women aspiring to become coaches but don’t even have fundamental coaching skills because there are no coaching programme for beginners,” claims Nyinawumuntu.

She further acknowledged that some women also just lack confidence to pursue a career in sports coaching or upgrade their levels, and there is no one to offer them that extra push to keep going,

"Some female coaches are hired by local teams not because, based on their performance, they deserve to be there. They just go to fill the positions reserved for a female coach.”

APR Women Volleyball Club’s Assistant coach, Marie Jose Rubayiza Umutesi, also highlighted that many women have quit coaching for good after realising that there is alarming insufficiency of coaching programmes for women.

"For instance, I have a level 1 coaching license but it’s difficult to find more coaching courses so I can upgrade it. Programmes that can help me upgrade are provided out of the country and I can’t attend them because it is expensive. We want to improve our qualifications, but there is no one to support us,” she said.

For now, Umutesi’s license only allows her to coach clubs while she wants to reach an advanced level and position herself for more opportunities, particularly with the national teams.

"We lack that kind of support to go out there and acquire more coaching skills so we can be qualified to even coach national teams,” she said.

As a result, she said, young women out there hesitate to launch their careers in coaching because they don’t see those who are already in the profession making progress.

"Everyone needs an inspiration, a role model, and they don’t see that in us because we are also struggling – almost stagnant.”

"Women are to blame” in athletics

Athletics is one of the mainstream sports that does not have a single woman coach, something that federation President Fidele Mubiligi says it is up to women to first show interest.

"They are not interested in coaching. There are coaching programmes that we bring to interested coaches, but when we invite clubs to send us names, only men attend. Women don’t show interest,” he said.

Mubiligi revealed that many, if not all, senior athletes who would otherwise be seen as potential future coaches, did not complete secondary school, and hence fail to qualify to attend the coaching courses.

"Many potential candidates can’t pursue these coaching courses because they lack the required level of education.”

Cycling on the move

In cycling, however, the federation (Ferwacy) say they are doing everything possible to train female coaches for the future for women cycling.

Emmanuel Murenzi, Ferwacy Technical Director, told this publication they are encouraging women to join coaching so they can take up the lead in the federation’s new drive of promoting women’s cycling.

"There is a number of women that we trained on the coaching fundamentals and we are planning, starting in October, to give them coaching courses at Level 1 License,” Murenzi said.

"We are going to promote women cycling in all aspects; from riders, to technicians to the coaches. Ferwacy is setting up a new department specifically for women cycling.”