by Olalekan Okusan, ITTF-Africa Press Officer

A president whose passion for sport goes beyond competition, he is also interested in the welfare of the athletes, he is ready for the double header.

Lotfi Guerfel explained:

“Everything is ready. We started panning for the events when the announcement was made that Tunisia will host the two tournaments at the Annual General Meeting of African Table Tennis Federation in Morocco in 2019. We have booked the venue, arrangement for the hotel has been made while officials of the African Federation have also come for inspection of facilities.

Unfortunately with the fire incident at the initial venue El Menzah Sports Palace in October 2019, we were informed by the authority that we will have to change the venue to the Rades Stadium and we are still in discussion with the authority to perfect everything.

For us, hosting a major competition is the best way to promote table tennis more in Tunisia and it is an opportunity to talk about table tennis in the media as well as to get equipment donations from ITTF.

Tunisia has not organised a senior event for several years and this is a good opportunity to promote table tennis in Tunisia. This will also afford our players to secure qualification to Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

The best players are from Egypt, Nigeria, Tunisia and Algeria, this was again been confirmed at the 2019 African Games in Morocco with the emergence of individual talents like Ibrahima Diaw of Senegal and Sarah Hanffou of Cameroon.

We will try to have some extra activities by arranging some visits for our guests to see beautiful places in Tunisia.”