by Ian Marshall, ITTF Publications Editor

Furthermore, new Board members were appointed with notably one woman securing a position; Khalem Fella, an international Umpire, former Arab Champion and a practising pharmacist, gained election.

Chérif Derkaoui spoke to Olalekan Okusan, the ITTF-Africa Press Officer

I thank the whole family of the table tennis who had confidence in me. I will do everything to gather all the forces, and work together with goodwill to try and ensure good representation of Algeria table tennis family.

My first objectives is the development of table tennis at national level and try to implant it throughout the Algerian territory; also we will work hard on the Algerian technical framework and give the opportunity to work under good conditions.

There will be real management of the Algerian elite in order to prepare a team that will be able to produce results at the regional, Arab, continental and international levels. We will also try to increase the number of players.

We will work with young people, energizing the work in schools throughout Algeria. Train more Algerian coaches; organize a lot of camps all over Algeria. My target is to see Algerian junior sensation, Abdebasset Chaichi, become the next African Senior Champion in 2020.

Table tennis is very important but I would like to give it an even more important stature by working at grassroots level, we will focus on young players; regarding senior players the coach in charge will make any selection decisions.