Ajfan International Badminton Academy (AIBA) is one of the private badminton academies in Maldives. AIBA was registered in 2020 and is run by Mohamed Ajfan Rasheed who is one of the Maldives’ best badminton players. He started playing badminton at the age of six and continued to do so.

Ajfan started the academy with the aim of teaching young players, as it is easy to teach and give training to young group of people. Moreover, many young players have interest to move forward with the field of badminton in Maldives. So, AIBA takes teaching young players seriously.

Prior to the establishment of AIBA, two years ago, Ajfan started training players privately. The age group for the academy is 5 to 15 years old.

Ajfan intends to make young players better than him and make them into promising stars in the sports field. AIBA aims to make way and provide opportunities for the young players to participate in international tournaments and to become national champions. They have been conducting training programs 7 days a week more than 50 players and a youth development program for the public. However, the trainings are temporarily halted due to the ongoing pandemic restrictions. The academy held a badminton tournament, the AIBA unity cup last year.

According to Ajfan, the public is very welcoming and assist AIBA to prosper and the parents of the players are supportive.

 “We request the parents to send their kids to the academy, if they have interest in badminton. We provide many opportunities for young players and help them to improve their skills in badminton and advocate live-in healthy lifestyles.”

He mentioned that AIBA being a private academy, there are several challenges faced. Due to the lack of resources, AIBA has difficulties to develop good players. Therefore, AIBA hopes the government will have a closer look on private academies like this and support the development of badminton in the country.