How first female football academy is changing the lives of Cameroonian girls

Gaelle Asheri is among the first girls to be trained at the academy (Photo: Reuters)

When Gaelle Asheri first started playing soccer in the dirt streets near her home in Cameroon’s capital, she was the only girl on the informal neighborhood teams which used stones for goal posts and kept score by chalking results on a wall.

Asheri, 17, and her teammate Ida Pouadjeu, 16, are now among the first wave of girls being trained by professional coaches at the Rails Foot Academy (RFA) in Yaoundé. It was set up in January to foster female soccer talent in a country where many still see the sport as a man’s game.