by Joseph Ngwawi – SANF 07 No 7
Africa will use sport to promote the values of tolerance, peace and development in 2007 as preparations intensify to host the continent’s maiden soccer World Cup in three years time.
Promotion of sport as an embodiment of the values of tolerance, peace and development is one of a battery of activities lined up for the International Year of African Football, launched during the Eighth Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) in Ethiopia.
Other activities to be undertaken during the year include reinforcing solidarity with South Africa for the 2010 Football World Cup; building capacity and human resource development to enhance Africa’s chances of winning the World Cup; and commemoration of African Sports Day on 14 December.
There will also be activities to promote gender mainstreaming in sport as well as to position Africa as one of the rising giants of international sports.
Addressing the assembly of heads of state and government on 29 January, South African President, Thabo Mbeki, said it was important that the celebrations were coming at the same period as Ghana’s independence celebrations 50 years ago.
The International Year of African Football aims to enhance Africa’s preparedness to host and win the 2010 World Cup and to strengthen African solidarity to create fertile conditions for using sport in integrated development programmes.
The AU heads of state and government agreed that, as the leading sport on the continent, football has a crucial role to play in the achievement of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) objectives, as well as key priorities agreed by AU leaders at the Ouagadougou Extraordinary Summit on Employment Creation and Poverty Alleviation in Burkina Faso in September 2004.
The Ouagadougou Summit produced a plan of action, which committed the African leaders to come up with programmes to promote employment creation and alleviate poverty on the continent.
One of the agreed targets was to introduce programmes that empower vulnerable groups such as the youth, persons with disabilities and people infected or affected by HIV and AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
The motion to declare 2007 as the International Year of African Football was proposed by Ethiopia at the AU Summit held in Sudan in January 2006.
The International Year of African Football will mark the 50th anniversary of the Confederation of African Football and will witness the emergence of several football-related events in the run up to the FIFA 2010 World Cup.
It is also hoped that the events lined up during the year will result in a new consciousness among Africans as to the massive contribution of football and sport at national and community levels to support AU programmes, especially in the areas of education, health, development and peace.
The decision emanated from acknowledging the role played by CAF in using sport as an instrument for promotion of unity, solidarity, peace and reconciliation, and its preventive campaigns against scourges such as HIV and AIDS that affect young Africans.
Many African footballers, plying their trade in the major leagues in Europe, have been used as role models in their home countries.
Cote d’Ivoire and English league champions, Chelsea striker Didier Drogba, was in January appointed a United Nations Development Programme goodwill ambassador whose role will be to promote the fight against poverty.
