Four months after the club continental championships, little has changed in African volleyball. On July 30th, Egypt won their 8th title as Men’s African Nations Champions, convincingly beating Tunisia 3-0 (26-24, 25-18, 25-21) at home in Cairo.
The story line in this year’s Men’s African Nations Championship was identical to the Club Continental Championships’ edition in March and. More or less, it is identical with the historical results of the Nations Championships, and with the state of volleyball in Africa as a whole. Namely, the dominance of North African countries and clubs is so established that, with the exception of Cameroon in the national championships, no country or club from south of the Maghreb has a chance to take a shot at the medals.
From 20 editions Egypt has 8 golds (including 6 in a row!), Tunisia also has 8 golds, Algeria has 2 and Cameroon has 2. North African countries and Cameroon have won a staggering 49 of the 60 medals distributed throughout all of the championships’ editions. In other words, 11% of all African countries have won 82% of the medals.
The final match lasted only 1 hour and 18 minutes in which the Egyptians out-blocked their opponents by 10/2 kill blocks. Ahmed Salah once again led his team to victory and was deservedly crowned as the Most Valuable Player of the entire tournament. In the last game, he managed to score 16 points – the highest score of the match.
Third and fourth place were again, non-surprisingly, for North African countries. In the small final, Algeria beat Morocco 3-1 (21-25, 25-19, 25-21, 25-20). The key element in this game was once again blocking as the Algerians made 9 more successful blocks than their competitors (15-6). In this game, Mohamed Hachdadi was the best scorer with 25 points. He was also the best scorer of the entire competition.
Cameroon reinforced their image as the best of the rest by finishing 5th, followed by Rwanda, Botswana, Kenya and Mauritius at ninth place.
Photo Source: CAVB
