Marriage can wait, says Sakina Saidi, star striker for league winners Fofila, as football offers women in Burundi a way to earn respect – and hard cash

Sakina Saidi wakes with a sense of trepidation in her father’s home in Gatumba, western Burundi.

She has pulled a muscle in her thigh and she does not want to play her first division match tomorrow. But if she doesn’t play, she won’t get paid. And she will be letting down her team, Fofila, who have never lost with her on the pitch.



Saidi is a striker in one of Burundi’s six first division women’s football teams, which are offering a small beacon of hope in the turmoil of the country’s political crisis.



She changes into her kit, packs her boots and travels for three hours, perched on the back of a pickup truck, to Ngozi, the president’s hometown, where her team are based and where they are due to play the following day.



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The popularity of women’s football in Burundi has endured despite a crisis that has triggered street protests, an attempted coup, extrajudicial killings and grenade attacks in the capital, Bujumbura. About 240,000 people have fled to neighbouring countries since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he would run for a third term, despite a constitutional two-term limit.



The UN warned in January that “a complete breakdown of law and order is just around the corner” with reports of atrocities including gang-rape, enforced disappearances and the digging of mass graves.

Saidi says it is very important that Burundi’s footballers play on, as sport transcends politics and “brings people together”.

Burundi’s women’s football association was founded in 2000 and now has two divisions. The second division has 10 teams.

The Burundi Football Federation (FFB) plans to expand the women’s game. A priority for the FFB’s 2015-18 development strategy is to get a squad up and running. The national team has never played a match – a frustration for Saidi. Funding shortfalls and the lack of equipment have hampered its development, meaning it has not managed to play the five matches against Fifa-ranked teams that it needs to get an official ranking.

In December, Burundi joined Fifa’s Live Your Goals scheme, a four-year programme to encourage female footballers, improve the quality of the game and give women more opportunities, both on and off the pitch.

Football offers some women a living in a country where opportunities are scarce. Subsistence agriculture employs 90% of the population, but with one of the most rapidly growing population densities in the world, farming is an increasingly untenable way of life. Burundi ranks 184th out of 188 countries in the UN’s 2015 human development index.

Saidi says the money she earns from football has helped build her self-esteem. “After my mother’s death, my father couldn’t work because he got sick. I stuck at football to see if I could contribute something to the family,” she recalls. She now earns enough to support her father and three siblings.

She has a different view of life to many of her friends, some of whom were married by 14. Four men have proposed to Saidi; all have been refused.

“You need to focus on your own life first. There is no specific time for marriage – it’s not something you can be late for,” she says.

When Saidi was a child, she was the only girl playing football on the dusty, potholed road that led from her home to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When she was 12, she earned $100 playing just one match for a team across the border. Regular premier league matches in Burundi now earn her $30 or $40, the fee depending on the team’s victory and the distance travelled.

Jocelyn Nyanzira, a friend and neighbour, says football encourages women to get out of the house and work. “It’s great for your body to get fit, but it’s also good for the development of the country,” she says.

Dominique Niyonzima, the FFB’s technical director, says men encourage the women. “They see women playing football all over the world – in Germany, in the UK. It contributes a lot to empowerment, helping [a woman] gain her own life. And it helps to integrate her into her family by helping her family to survive.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sakina Saidi stands in her bedroom, packing her kit for a match. Photograph: Jessica Hatcher

Lydia Nsekere is a household name among football fans in Burundi. In 2012, the former president of the FFB became the first woman in Fifa’s 100-year history to sit on the executive committee. Addressing the annual meeting of the International Olympic Committee women in sport commission last November, she said sport is a powerful tool for achieving irreversible, substantive gender equality by 2030, as set out in the sustainable development goals.

“Through sport we can teach some of life’s biggest lessons about equality, teamwork, resilience and fairness,” she said. “Sports programmes are also highly successful in reducing social isolation, particularly for women and girls in poverty, who might otherwise be confined within their communities and families, and in that process never, ever achieve what is otherwise their full potential.”

For now, equality is a distant prospect for female footballers in Burundi. During the transfer window for club teams, male footballers sell for up to BIF 900,000 ($580), Saidi says, while top female players sell for BIF 100,000 ($64).

Asked whether he approves of Saidi’s career choice, her 76-year-old father Said Ali Akizimana says with a wink: “I’ll show you the tools she used to persuade us.”

He hurries into his bedroom and emerges with a broad grin and an armful of medals on brightly striped ribbons. “The rest of the family was against it,” he recalls. “Fifteen years ago, if a girl played football, you would say she’s a disgrace to the family. Today, it’s normal.”