Aziza Nait Sibaha : « Taja Sport highlights women’s sporting achievements »

The Moroccan journalist Aziza Nait Sibaha launched « Taja Sport » on 8 March, a free bi-annual digital magazine dedicated to women’s sports practice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She tells us more about it in this interview. The sayings.

You have just launched Taja Sport, dedicated to women’s sports. Why did you decide to do this?

Several reasons led me to found Taja. First of all, the importance of promoting sport among women and young girls, in a region where many of them do not see any interest in it or do not have the opportunity to practice it. The first entry into sport is often school, but dropout affects girls much more in the MENA region. Add to this are the problems of early marriage and motherhood and, last but not least, the conservative mentalities that are sometimes opposed to women’s sports practice.

I also wanted to take advantage of my journalistic experience of nearly 25 years to set up a free media accessible to all, in order to highlight women’s sporting exploits, which to date have not received the media coverage they deserve, despite the long list of sportswomen who have distinguished themselves in all disciplines.

Why dedicate this media specifically to the MENA region?

First of all, because it is a region that I know well and where there is a flagrant lack of sports media for women. However, the so-called “women’s” magazines have good performances, but they prefer to stay in the field of fashion, travel, make-up… as if women couldn’t be interested in anything else.

We also chose Arabic for the magazine in order to reach more of the 220 million women in the region. The website is in French and Arabic and will eventually have an English version. The idea is to reach out to the French and English-speaking public in the region, but also to give the West a different image of what women in our region are capable of. 

Do you think it is a good idea to have more media involved in promoting women’s sports?

I hope that many of us will take this kind of initiative. We support and carry each other. There are not many media dedicated to women’s sport around the world. When you compare it to men’s sport, you have a lot of headlines, programmes, websites, in one country. On the women’s side, the reality is quite different. So I am delighted when I see a media that has the same values and I will be delighted to do things together with those who want to. 

What can you read in Taja Sport?

You can read interviews, portraits and reports about women in sport. Whether they are women leaders in the sports sector, professional champions, young aspiring champions, sports journalists, civil society leaders, but also women who carry the same values in the private sector. We have a large network of correspondents in different countries in the MENA region, which allows us to find authentic profiles that are not always well known. 

We have also chosen to put a young girl playing rugby in Marrakech on the cover. It is not a well-known champion, but rather the young generation we hope to reach.

We also devote a lot of space to handisport, which is often ignored in our region. In this respect, we have profiled the Moroccan wheelchair tennis champion Najwa Awane. Najwa also recorded a video message on our website to encourage the media, sponsors and families to support the practice of sports by people with disabilities.

This leads me to tell you that the website completes the editorial offer of the magazine with video reports made by our correspondents and soon podcasts. And since the magazine is bi-annual in this first year, the site also allows us to maintain contact with our public with an editorial offer that is renewed on a weekly basis.

We also have a strong presence on social networks with content created specifically for each platform. The youth of the MENA region consume a lot of internet and are very present on social networks. We have therefore also adapted our offer to these media.

What is the next step for Taja Sport?

At the moment we have launched the first issue and the website in Arabic and French. The next step will be to prepare the July issue. We hope to have enough support from the public without which we could not exist and from advertisers and sportsmen without whom it would be difficult for us to carry out our mission. From 2022, we will scale up to a monthly magazine in 5 years.