Former FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura has joined the Advisory Board of the African Collaborations Group (ACG), a strategic platform developing sports and entertainment infrastructure projects across Africa.
Samoura’s career
- Samoura led FIFA’s administration as Secretary General from 2016 until 2023. She was the first woman and the first person from outside Europe to occupy the role.
- During her seven-year term, she managed the governing body’s worldwide administrative operations, supervised the staging of two FIFA World Cups and two FIFA Women’s World Cups, and directed structural changes to international development initiatives and governance among member associations.
- Before moving into global sports leadership, Samoura built a career spanning more than 20 years in diplomacy and international development. She spent 21 years with the United Nations, managing demanding humanitarian programmes for the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
- She has also been a member of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) Senate since 2022.
New ACG role
At ACG, Samoura will offer strategic guidance as the organisation identifies and structures major sport and entertainment districts capable of attracting investment. The platform is targeting infrastructure shortfalls in Africa’s sports economy, which is forecast to grow to $20 billion by 2035.
ACG’s approach is designed to move beyond isolated stadium construction by creating integrated, commercially viable districts that combine sport, entertainment and mixed-use development.
“Fatma Samoura ranks among the outstanding sports administrators of her generation,” said Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, ACG’s founder and executive chairman.
He added that her experience spanning international governing organisations, national federations, governments and global institutions was exactly the level of expertise needed to develop a new generation of investable sports and entertainment districts throughout Africa.
ACG’s wider strategy
ACG serves as a central platform connecting national governments, public-private partnership authorities, development finance institutions, private-equity investors and international sports federations.
By creating an organised route from early-stage ideas to commercially viable projects, the group aims to attract institutional funding and speed up the wider industrial development of Africa’s sports and media industries.
