African Handball Championship Delayed Again Amid Political Tensions

After a second postponement, the 25th edition of the African Nations Cup for handball is rescheduled for the period of July 11 to 18, 2022, the African Handball Confederation (CAHB) announced in a press release issued on Tuesday, March 15. The body justifies this new postponement by the coincidence of the competition with the Mediterranean Games that the city of Oran is organizing from June 25 to July 5, the joint request of the International Committee of the Mediterranean Games and the intervention of the International Handball Federation (IHF).

These reasons are far from convincing. Algeria is behind this new postponement, TelQuel reports, which states that the neighbor to the east is well introduced at the CAHB headquarters based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The publication states that Mohamed Aziz Derouaz, commissioner of the Mediterranean Games, had, last February, "filed a request with the governing body of African handball to urge it to change the date of the holding of the handball CAN."

The postponement of the Arab Club Championship, scheduled for March 1-11, 2022 in Arzew and Oran, in which few clubs had confirmed their participation, is "another proof of the conspiracy hatched against Algerian handball," it estimates, thus referring to "a supposed willingness of Morocco to exclude the Fennecs from the handball CAN by organizing it in the Sahara." Algeria had in the meantime boycotted the competition because it was to be organized in part in Laâyoune. A choice that is still not to the liking of the neighbor to the east, protector of the independence movement, the Polisario.