Rwandan referee Salma Mukansanga will officiate her secoond World Cup game when defending champions France take on Tunisia in Group D on Wednesday, November 30, at Education City Stadium.World Cup 2022: Mukansanga returns to officiate France, Tunisia clash
Mukansanga will be the fourth official for the match, while New Zealand’s Matthew Conger is the fixture’s centre referee, assisted by fellow countrymen Mark Rule and Tevita Makasini.
Mukansanga is one of the three female referees selected for the first time for a men’s FIFA World Cup, alongside Japan’s Yamashita Yoshimi and France’s Stephanie Frappart.
The trio is part of the final list of the 36 match referees announced by World football governing body (FIFA) early this year on May 19.
A number of women previously officiated at the continental competition in the capacity of assistant referees, not central.
France, the first team to qualify for the round of 16, will be looking to make it three wins in a row when they take on Tunisia.
Salima Mukansanga (born 1988) is an international football referee from Rwanda who is a listed international referee for FIFA since 2012. She was an official at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France. In 2022, Mukansanga became the first woman to referee at the African Cup of Nations, leading out an all-woman officiating team of Fatiha Jermoumi (Morocco), Carine Atemzabong (Cameroon), and Bouchra Karboubi (Morocco) as the VAR. She has officiated at the Olympics, FIFA Women’s World Cup, Africa Women Cup of Nations and CAF Women’s Champions League. In 2022 she was one of the three women referees selected to officiate at the FIFA World Cup to be hosted in Qatar. Mukansanga became the first female African to officiate at the men’s top football event.
Early life
Mukansanga initially was involved in basketball but took up a career in football after being told that she was too young to join the national under-17 basketball squad. She approached the Rwanda Football Federation about joining a refereeing course after finishing secondary school but this was declined on the basis of her being too young again. She would later be allowed to take up a course with them after learning the laws of football herself in her own time. At the start of her career, Mukansanga officiated men’s local amateur football matches and women’s national second division matches in Rwanda.
