The Badminton Confederation Africa (BCA) will be hosting their virtual Annual General Meeting (AGM) on the 19th of June 2021, as per their Constitution and following the success of the 2020 virtual AGM.
The AGM is usually a physical meeting but due to the Covid-19 pandemic containment measures, the members could not meet physically, therefore the need for the Virtual AGM to provide direction for the planning and running of the Confederation. After the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the BCA Council sought the Member Associations’ views on the virtual AGM through a questionnaire, and a decision to hold virtual meetings was arrived at after analysing the responses of all the members. The decision to hold Virtual AGM was endorsed by the BCA council, then ratified at the 2020 AGM by 35 delegates of the 39 member associations who attended the AGM held on the 19th of December 2020. This gave birth to the first BCA Virtual AGM following the precedence set by the BWF. The BCA, with the support of the BWF, assisted member associations to successfully participate in the Virtual AGM, by providing the platform and technical support through preparatory webinars for the members.
This year’s Virtual AGM will also mark the end of the present BCA Council’s 4-year term, paving the way for the first-ever Virtual Elections in BCA history. Following an initiative led in 2018 by the BWF involving all the 5 Continental Confederations (Asia, Europe, Pan-America, Oceania, and Africa) to harmonize the various Confederations Constitutions and align key areas like governance, membership and judicial processes with the BWF constitution; the 2020 AGM amended the term of the next BCA Council to a two-year term to align the BCA constitution with the Badminton World Federation (BWF). This would eventually ensure that the elected President of the BCA, who automatically becomes the BWF Vice president, gets to serve his 4-year term during the Olympic cycle.
Various positions will be up for election: The President, Deputy President, Treasurer, and eleven Council members. Just like the 2020 AGM, the BCA secretariat, in collaboration with the BWF, will be providing all the relevant information before the AGM including presentations, video reports, and different webinars that will be organized to ensure the AGM is a success.
In the 2020 AGM, other amendments to the BCA Constitution were also passed by the members including; Making the BCA Constitution a better structured and easy-to-read document, aligning definitions and wordings in the current BCA constitution to the BWF Constitution, addition of globally acceptable principles (as a sports organization); for example Autonomy, Fair Play, Transparency, having a more realistic and democratic voting system in general meetings, alignment of the BCA elections to that of the BWF – for the term of the BWF VP, addition of the BCA Athletes Commission’s Chair as a full Council Member (with voting rights), and alignment of the BCA Judicial provisions to that of the BWF’s Constitution.
The current BCA Council members led by the President, Mr. Michel Bau from Seychelles, have been instrumental to the great development in badminton in Africa witnessed in recent years. Through the various Committees and Commissions in BCA, key areas like governance, finance, Marketing, Events, Women in Badminton, and capacity building for member associations have seen significant improvement.
