No white elephants in Gabon - president
Gabon president Ali Bongo Ondimba stressed on Thursday that the huge investment in infrastructure his country has undertaken for the Africa Cup of Nations has not left any "white elephants".
Bongo, speaking three days before the Elephants from the Ivory Coast take on the Copper Bullets of Zambia in the final, said: "We've only got dark elephants, not white elephants. We don't have any white elephants, we don't want them."
Bongo was alluding to the trap of constructing wasteful new stadia, hotels and roads for a one-off event that afterwards fall into disuse.
The 2012 Nations Cup has cost co-hosts Gabon between 450 and 600 million euros, according to the competition's organising committee.
"When you stage such an event you have to construct infrastructures...that doesn't simply mean stadia. We knew that we were in a position to carry out in a few years a major development which would normally take years to complete (without this financial backing).
"We've worked on roads, telecommunications, airports, hospitals, and so on.. overall this Nations Cup has been good for the country."
On the sporting front he added: "Having these stadia puts pressure on us. We've launched a study on how to reorganise football in our country, to instigate new policies directed at the young, in schools but also to reform the management of clubs to have stronger sides to attain a good level.
"If the show is there, people will go to the stadias.
"Africa must do what is done elsewhere, there's' no miracle, you have to work and that's what we're going to do."