Following the election of Gianni Infantino as FIFA President and the subsequent launch of the Forward Programme in 2016, the FIFA Regional Development Offices were introduced shortly after. The offices in Dakar, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Auckland, Dubai, Delhi, Asunción, Panama City and Barbados variously opened in 2017 and early 2018, while the office in Kigali came on board in 2022. The staff of the Regional Development Offices hail from the region in which they work and so understand the culture, speak the same language and work in the same time zone as the member associations that they support. As a result, they have a deep understanding of the situation faced by each member association on the ground. They are a key conduit between member associations and FIFA, which allows FIFA to better comprehend the needs of its members and the challenges with which they contend as they develop football – from the grassroots to elite level.
Locations: Auckland, Kuala Lumpur, Delhi, Dubai, Kigali, Johannesburg, Dakar, Barbados, Panama City and Asunción
Number of staff: 31
Number of nationalities: 29
Languages spoken: Arabic, Amharic, Belarusian, Bengali, Bislama, Creole, Dutch, English, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Kinyarwanda, Malagasy, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Setswana, Spanish, Swahili, Tamil, Thai, Tok Pisin and Zulu