BancABC Roots Impact Leagues Set to Kick Off Across Zimbabwe

The BancABC Roots Impact Leagues will officially kick off on Saturday 4 July, marking an important step in ZIFA’s drive to build a stronger, more structured and inclusive youth football development pathway across the country.

The leagues form part of the wider BancABC Roots Impact Programme, a ZIFA youth development and scouting initiative launched at the beginning of the year. Since the launch, provinces have appointed their respective technical teams, who have spent the past five months identifying and assessing some of the best young football talent at Under-14 and Under-16 level for both boys and girls.

This process has taken place across communities, schools and local football structures, with the aim of ensuring that talent is not only identified in major urban centres, but also in rural and underserved areas where many promising young players often go unnoticed.

At its heart, the BancABC Roots Impact Programme seeks to respond to some of the long-standing challenges that have affected youth football development in Zimbabwe. These include fragmented competitions, unequal access to playing opportunities between urban and rural communities, the absence of a structured pathway into elite football, and weak safeguarding and child protection systems.

Through this programme, ZIFA and BancABC are working to create a more organised and accountable development environment where young players can be seen, coached, protected and guided through a clear football pathway.

The goal is simple: to manufacture football talent in a safe, governed and merit-based environment.

For years, Zimbabwean football has relied heavily on raw ability emerging from schools, communities and informal competitions. While this has produced talented players, the lack of a consistent national structure has meant that many young footballers have either developed without proper support or disappeared from the system before reaching their full potential.

The BancABC Roots Impact Leagues are designed to change that. By placing provincial technical teams at the centre of talent identification and development, the programme creates a more deliberate and transparent process for building future national team players.

The leagues will also give young players regular competitive exposure, while allowing coaches and scouts to monitor their development over time. This is especially important at Under-14 and Under-16 level, where proper guidance, coaching and protection can have a lasting impact on a player’s growth.

Respected football commentator and analyst Steve Vickers said the programme is both timely and necessary for Zimbabwean football.

“This is a programme whose time has come,” said Vickers. “For a long time, Zimbabwe has had talent, but not always the systems to properly identify it, develop it and protect it. The BancABC Roots Impact Programme speaks directly to some of the developmental deficiencies that have contributed to our underperformance at national level. If implemented well, it can become a strong foundation for the future of the game.”

ZIFA believes the leagues will help strengthen the player pipeline by ensuring that young footballers from all ten provinces are given a fair opportunity to compete and be assessed. The involvement of both boys and girls also reflects the Association’s commitment to balanced development and wider participation across the game.

Beyond competition, the programme also places strong emphasis on safeguarding, child protection, coach education and proper administration. This ensures that the development of players is not only measured by performance on the pitch, but also by the quality and safety of the environment in which they grow.

The kick-off on Saturday 4 July therefore represents more than the start of matches. It signals the beginning of a structured national effort to rebuild youth football from the ground up.

With provinces now ready to showcase the talent identified over the past five months, the BancABC Roots Impact Leagues are expected to provide a vital platform for Zimbabwe’s next generation of footballers.

For ZIFA, the long-term ambition is clear: to create a development system that is inclusive, competitive, properly governed and capable of producing players who can serve clubs, academies and national teams with distinction.

The journey begins this Saturday.

More News