For the many diehard football fans who may assume I know nothing about football, I’ve a surprise for you. I can tell you the off-side rule and point at the 18-yard box in my sleep. I also know TMO is not the latest shoe design label, but Television Match Official.
Meaningful Policy
On the night “our very own” Divock Origi of Liverpool Football Club made history by helping in one of the most remarkable comebacks in the European Champions League, I wondered if he would have had similar opportunities to play professional football had he not been born in Belgium. Would he even have had any toenails left if he spent years practising on our neglected rocky local football pitches?
Kenya has abundant sports talent that’s let down by mismanagement and corruption. There are many Vivians, Wanyamas, Origis, Rudishas and Kipchoges out there wasting away for lack of funds and facilities to nurture their talents.
Sports is an industry that can help to address the employment crisis in the country. Our athletics superstars are a testament that sports can help in tackling poverty. Athletics does not require that much to pool talents like other sports disciplines, which need huge facilities, but even that is challenged by lack of leadership, graft and doping.
Many athletics stars have flown Kenya’s flag high and became the ambassadors that, sadly, are rarely celebrated at home. I’m amazed that we don’t have a memorial centre for the many athletics stars that have brought us glory!
How many know of Kip Keino Athletics Stadium in Bristol, UK? Would the younger generation tell world marathon record holder Eliud Kipchoge and the 1968 Mexico Olympics star Kipchoge Keino apart 20 years from now?
The Jubilee government’s election campaign promise to build stadiums now seems empty. Such false hopes do not help in achieving meaningful policy framework in sports management.
Create Opportunities
Since Jubilee came to power with its ambitious pledge, the three ministers in the docket have spent quite some time visiting the building sites. Nearly a decade later, there is nothing to show and the response seems drawn from a shared script. Amina Mohamed has, like her predecessors, also promised that they will be completed. I won’t hold my breath.
Two issues are linked to the stadiums: Employment, especially for the youth, and revenue that can be generated from sports and other entertainment activities.
The English Premier League, which almost every young Kenyan is mad about, raises in taxes alone billions of pounds for the British government yearly. English football, luckily, is an equal opportunity employer in that it has offered a chance to thousands of young people from socially challenging backgrounds.
Those opportunities have spread across the globe, with African footballers among the highest beneficiaries. Basketball and American football have equally created many opportunities for young people in the US and produced sports millionaires.
Tiger Woods is a golf talent nurtured at infancy.
I wonder, then, what it would take for Kenya to harness its sports talents and benefit from them at home?
Commercial Venture
Kenya has just had an amazing London Marathon with wins in both the men’s and women’s races. One area that we have shone at and led the world is in athletics. However, this is also now in jeopardy with runaway doping scandals affecting it. Corruption has, without a doubt, exacerbated the problem and only time will tell if we can hold on to the athletics prowess we keep talking about. We’re failing to jealously guard one of our best exports and protect it from greed.
Building of the stadiums would obviate the opportunities for the youth that the State keeps singing about. Sports is an industry lying fallow and is being held back by politics, lack of funding and facilities.
Political influence in how stadiums are managed has become toxic to development of sports in the country.
Looking at the immense efforts applied to get a stadium ready for just a day of political speeches shows how much we prioritise politics over sports. If the same energy were applied to build and maintain a stadium, the positive results would far outweigh those engendered by our noisy politics.
Stadium use is versatile. A creative administration would ensure that it stays open beyond the sports calendar and is able to bring in the much-needed revenue from other activities, such as concerts and social events. That would, in turn, create employment, with the youth benefiting from the sports academies linked to the stadiums and spur the growth of the sports industry and the economy too.
It might be worth changing our mindset and start looking at sports as a commercial venture rather than just as bait for votes.
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