Doha, November 30 (QNA) – The College of Science and Engineering (CSE) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) organized Wednesday a discussion under the title “Football on the World Stage: What About Africa?” in collaboration with the Cultural Village Foundation – Katara and the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) Africa.
Influential representatives of African football stakeholders, including the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the media, footballers, academics, and African fans and spectators associations, focused on the profound impact and multidimensional influence of the FIFA World Cup on the game in Africa.
Over the course of three panel discussions, speakers shed light on the continents football landscape and its position on the global stage – from the five African nations participating in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 to Egypts joint bid with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Greece for the 2030 FIFA World Cup.
The first panel set out key aspects of Africas football history, current challenges, and its contributions to the FIFA World Cup.
The second panel, “Aspiring Projects: AI Reshaping the Future of Football”, highlighted two promising artificial intelligence (AI) projects developed at CSE and how they may impact the football experience. The first segment focused on SADA Insight: AI for Sport Media and Events, a newly launched AI and data technology system capable of providing ultrafast, continuous insights on sentiments and public reactions to mega events based on the content of tweets. The second project was the collaborative sports tech start-up, sKora, a data-driven digital sports agent.
The final panel was titled “Down Memory Lane: A Retrospective View and Future Prospects”.
Commenting after the closing, Dr. Kamilla Swart, Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Science in Sport and Entertainment Management at CSE, said: “From one country representing Africa in 1970 to five in 2022, it is certainly an exciting time and place to have such a discussion during the historical 2022 FIFA World Cup. Our panel discussions created a space for some of the most informed experts to reflect on what the future holds for African football on the global stage, and this is not without its challenges. For CSE, it was a privilege to show how our cutting-edge digital technologies and AI-driven expertise can help in overcoming resource and access challenges creating barriers to professionalization, and also enhance future mega events.” (QNA)