Nanama Keita, Sports Editor of the Daily Observer left Banjul yesterday for Accra, Ghana, to attend a two-week sports journalism training course.

The training, dubbed Twenty Ten: African media on the road to 2010, is jointly organised by the World Press Photo Foundation, Free Voice, Africa Media Online and lokaal mondiaal in their bid to encourage media professionals to creatively produce and distribute articles, images, broadcasts and multimedia productions related to African football.

 The Observer Sports anchorman is one of the 36 selected participants for the print media. A total of 108 participants, including 36 photographers and 36 radio journalists, have been selected by an independent professional commission from all over the continent to write, tape or photograph African stories until and during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

After the Ghana training sessions, which come on the heels of a six-week on-line course involving the participants, an independent selection committee will select the 18 most talented participants from the lot to travel to South Africa finals, though not until every participant has submitted an assignment revolving around football for judgment. "It's a pleasure to be part of the Twenty Ten All-stars team. This is a unique opportunity for me to not only learn new ideas as a young sport journalist but also make new friends for the good of the trade. I look forward to having a successful training in Ghana and hopefully in South Africa too," Keita told the column he manages shortly before his departure.

Twenty Ten project is inspired by the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which is being organized on the African continent for the first time, and the media opportunities this has to offer. Football is an integral aspect of life all over Africa, as well as in the rest of the world. This project aims to give African journalists a voice, both on the African continent, as well as worldwide. It offers African citizens the opportunity to experience their own view of African reality, as opposed to depending on foreign news organizations.

The Ghana training will focus on improving participants' storytelling techniques and will stimulate their creativity to report about the role, importance and impact of football in Africa. The workshop will mainly consist of practical assignments, after which the participants will receive feedback from at least two experts in their journalistic discipline. To ensure enough personal attention can be given to each All Star, three identical workshops will be organized in each journalistic discipline and each workshop will contain a maximum of 12 participants.