By Alpha Barrie

Alhassane Thierno Diack, the Executive Director of International OlympAfrica Foundation has reiterated that the OlympAfrica’s idea is to use sports as a platform for social development.

The International OlypmAfrica Foundation Executive Director was in Sierra Leone for the officially signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) towards the construction and activation of an OlympAfrica Sports and Development Center at Kalangba, Karene District, Northern Sierra Leone.

Speaking to the press after the official signing of the MOU with the National Olympic Committee of Sierra Leone (NOC-SLE) and OlypAfrica Foundation on Monday, July 28, 2025, at the NOC/ CGA-SLE’s headquarters on 13 Walpole Street in Freetown, Thierno Diack noted OlympAfrica is a network of centers that they are building with foundation which have been created to give opportunities to Africa countries for sports development.

He underscored the first OlympAfrica center was built in 1989 and since 2006 to date they’ve accelerated the numbers close to 50 centers all over Africa, and all of them are in the Sub-Sahara countries.

“The idea is to use sports as a platform for social development. We are not only limited to sports, but we are doing quite a lot of other activities,” he stated.

Diack continued that they are focusing on the very young kids of which right now the network is having more than 6.5 million kids all over the Continent that are participating in their activities or going to their centers.

“Apart from that we are involved into social development, we are building schools; health centers; we are funding a lot of economic projects. We are looking at the need of the local population and we are assisting them in terms of making life easier for them and also giving job opportunities to kids especially in the county side so that they don’t need to go to town when they have everything they need home; there is no need for them to go to town to try to struggle there.”

“The idea is to use sports to keep kids, educate them better, give them a better house and also try to make them good citizens, that’s what we are trying to do. Also the idea is to be able to give an answer to the local needs; we are not going to look at what we want, but we are looking at what the people need so that the people in this community will have to tell us what they want in terms of other activities and we will be there to assist them in terms of equipment and funding. The Executive Director maintained. “We are talking about farming; there would funding available for that; we would bring water; we would bring everything which is needed so that people can harvest more which means there will be more revenue for the local people in the community,” he noted.

On the duration of the construction, the OlympAfrica Chief said basically what they are trying to do is to try to have the center ready for the next seven to eight months.

“The first quarter of next year the center will be officially opened. The project will cost us around 250, 000 to 275, 000 thousand US Dollars on the first stage and then after that we are talking about the equipment to be here, but also all the activities that we are going to do will be funded by us,” he concludes.