African Collaborations Group Adds Samoura to Advisory Board, Her Second Board Seat in a Week

Fatma Samoura | Image by The New Zealand Herald via Photosport

Fatma Samoura, who spent seven years running FIFA's global administration as its first woman and first non-European Secretary General, has joined the Advisory Board of African Collaborations Group (ACG), the London-based platform that originates sport and entertainment district projects across Africa. This gives ACG one of the best-connected figures in global sport governance just as it tries to convince governments and development finance institutions that district-scale projects, are the way to build Africa's sport economy.

Samoura served as FIFA Secretary General from 2016 to 2023, a tenure that covered two men's World Cups and two Women's World Cups and put her in charge of the federation's operational and institutional machinery, including its relationships with member associations and its international development programmes. Before FIFA, she spent more than 21 years at the United Nations in senior humanitarian and development roles at the World Food Programme, the UN Development Programme and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, working across Africa, Central and South America and Asia. She has also sat on the Senate of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile since February 2022.

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Fatma Samoura | Speaking at a FIFA event

The ACG appointment is her second African sport board role in a matter of days. As BOSA reported, Samoura was named Chair of the Board of Directors at Senegal's Sport for Education and Economic Development (SEED) Project,the basketball academy founded by Amadou Gallo Fall, with the board holding its first meeting under her leadership on August 28.

Pompigne-Mognard, ACG's Founder and Executive Chairman, called the appointment a strategic asset for the board, pointing to her experience spanning global governing bodies, national federations, governments and international institutions.

ACG's Advisory Board advises on the projects the company originates and structures: mixed-use sport and entertainment districts that bring together governments, PPP authorities and regulators, development finance institutions, private investors, developers and engineers, legal and transaction advisors, operators, federations and leagues, broadcasters and academic institutions. The company's pitch is that Africa's sport economy, projected to reach $20 billion by 2035, has outgrown the single-venue model and needs financially sustainable district ecosystems capable of generating revenue well beyond matchdays.

That pitch runs into a familiar problem: getting a government to commit land, a DFI to commit capital and a federation to commit its name to a project that doesn't exist yet. Samoura has spent her career on exactly that kind of alignment, first moving UN humanitarian resources through governments that don't always agree with each other, then running FIFA's relationships with 211 member associations that agree even less. ACG, an origination platform whose product is essentially trust between parties who rarely deal with each other directly, that is a useful skill.

Taking the SEED Project chair and an ACG advisory seat within the same week says something about where Samoura is placing her post-FIFA appointments, and it says something about who is recruiting her. Basketball academy governance and sport real estate origination sit at opposite ends of the sector, but both need a name that federations and governments already trust before they'll engage. A federation president or a sports ministry weighing whether to take an ACG meeting is more likely to pick up.