BBC African Sports Personality of the Year 2021 - Information, Terms & Conditions

  • Published

The BBC African Sports Personality of the Year segment will be pre-recorded with the winner of the award at their preferred location and broadcast on Focus On Africa TV & Radio and online on Friday 7th January 2022.

The nominations processes, criteria and voting details for the award are outlined below.

BBC African Sports Personality of the Year

This award goes to the sportsperson whose sporting actions have most captured the African public and the diaspora's imagination during 2021 (between 1 January and 15 September).

An expert independent panel (hereafter 'the Panel') will convene to decide the shortlist of sportspeople for the BBC African Sports Personality of the Year award.

A selected list of journalists from North, Southern, East, West and Central African regions, and the United Kingdom have provided the Panel with their top six sportsperson from 2021 (from January to September 2021). The Panel will be free to consider other potential candidates.

The Panel will select a shortlist of sportspeople for the main award on the basis of the following criteria:

  • Reflects African best sporting achievements on the international stage in 2021 (January to September).

  • Takes into account 'impact' of the person's sporting achievement beyond the sport in question.

Sportspeople are eligible to be nominated for the BBC Africa Sports Personality of the Year award if they are African.

The Panel will produce a shortlist based on reaching a consensus view. If a consensus view cannot be reached on all or some of the candidates, then the Panel are asked to vote for the remaining candidates.

The Panel have the right to amend elements of this award such as the criteria or numbers shortlisted, should a consensus view be reached - provided such changes remain within the spirit of the award. Ben Sutherland, Editor of BBC Sport Africa chairs the panel which consists of BBC journalists.

The 2021 shortlist of contenders will be announced on 6 December 2021 at 05:45 GMT. The public will then have until 23:59 GMT on 19 December 2021 to vote for the winner of the award. The vote will be overseen by an independent verification service. The winner of the award will be announced on 7 January 2022. He/She would have received the award before the announcement.

In the event of a tie in the public vote amongst the two contenders obtaining the highest number of votes, the award will be shared.

Further advice may be sought directly from the BBC's Editorial Policy team.

Online Voting Terms and Conditions

1. You can take part in the African Sports Personality of the Year 2021 vote by accessing bbc.co.uk/sport/africa. You will find the question and a list of alternative answers. You can register your vote by electronically selecting the option you wish to vote for.

2. Voting will open at 05:45 GMT on Monday, 6 December 2021 and closes at 23:59 GMT on Sunday, 19 December 2021. Any votes registered outside the announced voting times will not count.

3. This is not a competition and there will be no prize for anyone voting.

4. The number of times you can vote may be restricted. The presence of a cap to voting and what that limit is will be made clear for each vote.

5. The BBC will announce the final result on-air and/or online when voting is closed, and the actual result is known. This will be on Friday, 7 January 2022.

6. The BBC reserves the right to disqualify entries or suspend voting if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that fraudulent voting has occurred or if it considers there has been any attempt to rig the voting. The BBC has the right to substitute an alternative selection method at its absolute discretion.

7. If, for any reason, the online voting system fails, the vote may be suspended, or a contingency plan may be actioned.

8. The BBC reserves the right to change, cancel or suspend this vote at any time.

9. The BBC, its sub-contractors, subsidiaries and/or agencies cannot accept any responsibility whatsoever for any technical failure or malfunction or any other problem with any system, server, provider or otherwise which may result in any vote not being received by the BBC, not properly registered or recorded.

10. Please note that BBC, BBC Group or Telescope employees or anyone who is directly connected in any way with the associated BBC content or the vote is not eligible to vote.

11. To the extent that it applies, the voting accords with the BBC's Code of Conduct for Competitions and Voting, details of which can be found on the BBC's Standards and Guidelines website at https://www.bbc.com/editorialguidelines/guidance/code-of-conduct

12. Online votes are subject to the BBC Privacy and Cookies Policy found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/privacy/privacy-policy, more information about BBC Cookies can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/cookies/ and BBC online Terms of Use found at http://bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/terms/terms-of-use, external.

13. These Terms and Conditions are governed by the law of England and Wales.