The illustration above however , points to a wider problem in Kenyan and indeed African sports . It is posited that African governments pay mere lip service to the development of sports . As noted by Prof . Simon Chadwick of Coventry University , sports in Africa plays out against the backdrop of a post-colonial narrative . This narrative tends to depict the continent as impoverished with more pressing needs to address than sports . And even when African governments do support sporting activities , corruption and mismanagement undermine their efforts .
Perhaps in an attempt to address the issues that ail sports elsewhere on the continent , former President Uhuru Kenyatta ’ s government conceived the idea of a Sports , Arts and Social Development Fund ( SASDF ). The Fund was established under the Public Finance Management ( Sports , Arts and Social Development Fund ) Regulations , 2018 . The Fund was meant to provide funding to support the development and promotion of sports and arts , and the promotion of social development including universal health-care . From what this writer was able to glean , the Fund disbursed a total of Kshs . 1,362,694,433 to various federations and sports organisations during the 2018 / 2019 financial year according to the Auditor General ’ s report .
The following financial year , the Fund is noted to have disbursed Ksh550 million to fund two golf tournaments and a golf talent academy but only allocated about Ksh . 403 million to finance football , volleyball and rugby which -barring athletics- are arguably the country ’ s most popular sports . The Fund disbursed Ksh94 million to the Kenya Rugby Union for participating
in the IRB Sevens Series , facilitating international matches for the 15s rugby side and overseeing the Kenya Cup as well as other local rugby competitions . In the same year , the Fund allocated Ksh293 million which was supposed to cater for the Harambee Stars ’ attempt to qualify of the Africa Cup of Nations as well as paying the coach and his technical bench .
However , it would appear that Fund has not done as much as it was expected to . Indeed , funding remains the bane of various sports federations . Incidentally , the money our federations can expect from government coffers appears to be steadily diminishing . Consider the following :
1 . In 2022 / 2023 then Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury Ukur Yattani – in his final budget speech- recommended allocating the Fund a record Ksh15.8 billion . This allocation was an increase from the Sh15 billion handed to the Fund in the previous financial year .
2 . In his maiden budget speech , Yattani ’ s successor Prof . Njuguna Ndung ’ u allocated a paltry Ksh6.4 billion to the Fund for the 2023 / 2024 financial year .
It is worth noting that this writer was unable to determine if the Fund has actually received the proposed allocations in their entirety since 2018 . It gets even murkier when one attempts to uncover just how much the various sports federations have received courtesy of the Fund from its inception to date .
In addition to running the fund in a more transparent manner , there a few other things need to happen as well :
1 . Our politicians and policy wonks must accept that investment in sports federations , teams , personnel and facilities cannot be done as an end in itself . Rather investment in sports must be viewed as a means to lasting socio-economic development .
2 . Corruption in the management of our sports needs to be completely eradicated . The Kenyan sports sector appears to be overrun by rather amoral , mercenary and untrustworthy individuals . These reprobates should be nowhere near our respective sports federations .
3 . We must put more effort in actualising and scaling public private partnerships to develop sports and recreation venues , sports medicine centres , sports academies , and even mixed-use sports developments across the country .
Kenyan sports is at an inflection point . While we continue to impress on the world stage across a number of sporting disciplines , the lack a coherent national sports policy , mismanagement , corruption , as well as the absence an effective strategy to leverage the government ’ s authority and the dynamism of our private sector continuously undermines our efforts . Urgently addressing these fault lines should give rise to a thriving sports industry we can all be proud of .
Walter Nyabundi is a seasoned Social Researcher . You can commune with him on this or related matters via email at : Nyabundiw @ gmail . com .