Mark Namanya is based in Uganda where he is the sports editor for the Daily Monitor. In November we posted an article about Mark’s impressions of South Africa and the impact of Western media on his preconceptions of the country. Mark has written one article so far for the Twenty Ten Project’s Africa Media Online. The article focuses on the 100 year rivalry between two soccer clubs based in Cairo, Al-Alhy and Zamalek. He gives an account of how this soccer made capital becomes “football crazy” on the day of this yearly soccer match.

Crazy fans enjoy life in the slow lane

Mark Namanya/Daily Monitor/Twentyten

Location: Cairo, Egypt

Take an iconic city, quadruple its population, add a few million foreign visitors, throw in the mother of all traffic jams for good measure and then stage one of the most passionate sporting occasions imaginable and what do you end up with?
“Madness,” most people would call it.
In Africa, they have another word for it: “Cairo”.
You certainly have to be crazy – and football crazy in particular – to venture out into the streets of the Egyptian capital on the day of the Al Ahly-Zamalek derby.
Few sporting occasions around the world can match its intensity. The two clubs have a rivalry which can be traced back almost 100 years and which has dominated Egyptian football for as long as most people can remember.
When the two sides meet – or, indeed, when Egypt take…

FOR THE FULL STORY OF 860 WORDS CONTACT pictures@africamediaonline.com

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In this post we feature the work of Joseph Opio from Uganda. Joseph wrote a great piece on the failed rising of a potential soccer playing great called, Nii Lamptey of Ghana. Nii was supposed to be the next Pele, “So dazzling was the Black Starlet that Pele remarked that “Lamptey is my natural successor.” The Brazilian legend had just watched Lamptey pick up the FIFA U-17 World Cup and the Golden Ball for good measure. Lamptey, midfield sorcery notwithstanding, had managed to top-score with four goals as well.”

Here is a snippet of the rest of this article, which can be purchased via our website:

The tragedy of Nii Lamptey…and his quest for redemption

Article Synopsis: Lamptey was once Ghana’s most precocious gift. But his star flared all too briefly before being extinguished by a cocktail of dodgy agents, a numbing lack of education and treasonable neglect from the game’s overseers.

Text: Greater Accra, Ghana: Cocoa is Ghana’s leading export. But, lately, cocoa’s visibility as the country’s main foreign exchange earner is, at least symbolically, running into a challenge from Ghana’s talent at football.

Football has established Ghana as a hotbed of talent. And seduced, hawk-eyed scouts scour this terrain of 22 million, desperate to unearth the next big thing…or for the most optimistic, the next Nii Lamptey.

If the name rings no bell, dear reader, blush not! Lamptey was once Ghana’s most precocious gift. But his star flared all too briefly before being extinguished by a cocktail of dodgy agents, a numbing lack of education and treasonable neglect from the game’s overseers.

Ghana’s first genuine wonder kid burst into prominence at the 1991 World Youth Cup where his golden potential made other whiz kids like Argentina’s Juan Sebastian Verón and Italy’s Alessandro del Piero look like base metal.

So dazzling was the Black Starlet that Pele remarked that “Lamptey is my natural successor.” The Brazilian legend had just watched Lamptey pick up the FIFA U-17 World Cup and the Golden Ball for good measure. Lamptey, midfield sorcery notwithstanding, had managed to top-score with four goals as well.

“When Pele said I could go on to become like…

FOR THE FULL STORY OF 825 WORDS CONTACT pictures@africamediaonline.com