Petrochemicals company Sasol has extended its partnership with the South African Football Association.
Sasol will continue as the headline sponsor of the women’s national team and title sponsor of the top-tier domestic women’s league.
The long-running partnership will run for an additional four years until 2021.
The partnership first commenced in 2009 and Sasol has played a leading role in the development of women’s football.
The Sasol League has more than 3,600 female footballers playing regular, competitive football to improve the standard of the women’s game in the country. It has also given female football players the opportunity to obtain bursaries at institutions of higher learning through football, with 35 of the 46 core players in the national team either studying or with qualifications.
“The Sasol partnership has not only changed lives for the better for our football playing community but has provided life changing opportunities for most of our football playing women/girls. Part of Vision 2022 is to increase the number of people playing football to 10 per cent of the country’s population,” said the SAFA president Danny Jordaan.
“This means more than five million of our population must be involved in the game one way or the other and most of these will come from females. With the partnership that we have entered with Sasol, this goal is likely to be achieved much earlier.”
The South African women’s national team will be competing in the COSAFA Women’s Cup in Zimbabwe from September 13-24.