The FAM President Fleetwood Haiya on Wednesday paid a courtesy call to Ascent Academy in Lilongwe.
The aim of the visit was to appreciate the efforts of the academy which is the only full-time football academy that also has a scholarship program in the country.
Haiya said Ascent Academy which has facilitated the move of a number of players abroad will be key to the Transforming the game’s player export strategy.
“As a country we don’t have big football stars in big leagues of Europe, America, and the Middle East . This is due to the unviability of a systematic plan to export our best talents for development in the world’s best leagues. One way of realising that is to nurture and export talent via scholarships through academies and high schools. Ascent is doing that and we need to work with them so that we increase the number of players abroad and this is why I am here to appreciate these wonderful efforts.
“ As FAM we have developed guidelines for regulating Academies and have embarked on an exercise to register and license all academies in the country. We will support the academies to ensure we have structured player development platforms and defined systematic pathways.