the african media entrepreneur » world cup

"It’s Euro-sports, not politics, that’s shaking up Africa," says Daily Nation's Charles Onyango-Obbo

dominique le roux — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:46:29 +0000

I appreciated the boldness and honesty of Onyango-Obbo’s blog on Kenya’s Daily Nation‘site. The article – read it in full below – was shared with me by one of the Twenty Ten Allstar journalists, and it certainly does go a long way to articulating why our coverage of this World Cup is quite so important: by focusing on such a significant sporting event, rather than the usual fare of African political or environmental catastrophe, Twenty Ten invests a positive energy into this continent’s journalism and thereby, I believe, its democracy.

There were sniggers in Africa about last week’s elections in Britain. In some places, election officials were overwhelmed by long queues and some voters ended up not casting their ballots.

However, on Tuesday evening, we were treated to a dramatic example of how ruthlessly efficient an old democracy can be. In less than three hours, Prime Minister Gordon Brown held a press conference to announce he was resigning as Labour Party leader, and to say he expected that Conservative Partly leader David Cameron would be invited by the Queen to be the next prime minister.

He then went to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation, left without police outriders clearing traffic for his motorcade since he was now an ordinary citizen, and indeed, got caught in a traffic jam. In the meantime, his personal possessions were being moved out of No. 10 Downing Street.

As he spoke at the Labour Party headquarters to bid the staff farewell, Cameron made his way to Buckingham Palace to see the queen. The pictures of the queen receiving him were available to the world. Another 15 minutes later, he was out and in 10 Downing Street — which probably still had the whiff of Mrs Brown’s perfume in the air — as new prime minister. Say what you will, that was impressive stuff.

The discussion on BBC’s Focus Africa on Wednesday morning was about what a Cameron leadership meant for Africa. There was a strong view that because he is, compared to Brown, a hardliner on immigration, fewer Africans might get political asylum, and probably quite a number already there illegally could be deported.

It is embarrassing to hear Africans worrying about their inability to get asylum and emigrate to the West. Nevertheless, because of the reality of the large African Diaspora and the fact that their remittances are the largest source of foreign exchange for some countries (like Eritrea), it is a big issue.

For this reason, my sense is that elections in the West today mean more for Africans — especially the millions who depend on remittances from relatives — than our own national elections. Our elections will not change lives for many, but if 10,000 Kenyans or Ugandans were expelled from the UK, the consequences back home would be devastating.

In the long term, though, it is not the politics of the West that will most affect Africa. It is the non-political things like sports. The dozens of African players like Chelsea’s Didier Drogba have turned European leagues into a near-cult cross-border phenomenon in Africa. Daily, the media have stories about the goals African footballers scored in the English Premier League, for example.

Every week, we are treated to Ethiopians and Kenyans winning marathon after marathon in European and American races. This sporting success has created the one class of wealthy Africans whom, you can confidently say, has grown rich without being corrupt.

The global success and stardom of these African sporting figures is possibly the single largest force influencing what poor and working class children on the continent want to be. From Maputo to Algiers, dozens of boys have taken to football, often playing with crudely made balls, in the hope they will become the next Samuel Eto’o.

Across countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, thousands of young boys and girls daily take to the hills at dawn to run, hoping that one day they will find the fame and fortune of Sammy Korir or Haile Gebrselassie. There are no things that Africans experience collectively like the ups and downs of their sportsmen and women in Europe.

They are having a homogenisation effect whose consequences could be very visible in another five to 10 years. But if the homogenisation of Africa were happening only from these Diaspora and sporting sources, they would not be far-reaching. However there is another force that is “flattening” Africa together dramatically — Nigerian films (Nollywood).

Other than the pride in Nelson Mandela, the books of Chinua Achebe, and the music of Hugh Masekela, I cannot imagine an African product that has been as pervasive as Nollywood. In turn, Nollywood has helped touch off a new infatuation with things African. In countries like Sierra Leone, there are now FM stations that play only African music.

Many African TV stations, like Kenya’s Citizen, now have an all-African programmes schedule, a large chunk of them locally produced. If you went into hibernation in 1990 and woke up today, it is in the field of sports stars and cultural consumption of Africa today that would most strike you as being very different. Its politics, well, is little changed.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com

via nation.co.ke

Posted via web from africanmedia’s posterous

Launch of 'Africa United: The road to Twenty Ten'

dominique le roux — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:32:08 +0000

The Amsterdam Arena

How exciting to launch a book of African journalism in the Amsterdam Arena. Africa United: The road to Twenty Ten showcases some of the best work that has come out of the Twenty Ten project so far, so it was certainly a milestone in the project for all of us.

Edited by Stefan Verwer, Marc Broere and Chris de Bode and published by KIT Publishers, the book is an Everyman’s poignant guide to the role of football in Africa, as told by writers and photographers from across Africa.

Andrew Esiebo, a Twenty Ten participant whose photographs appear in the book, presented the book to Ajax footballers Maarten Stekelenburg and Eyong Enoh.

Guest speaker Guy Berger, head of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University

Africa United can be ordered through KIT Publishers.

Twenty Ten Dream Team Print Journalist: Mark Namanya

dominique le roux — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:07:31 +0000

Here is the third post featuring one of our print journalists in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

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

The Dream Team will be producing content all the way through the end of the World Cup and beyond. If you are intersted in purchasing some of our content or commissioning a specific piece please feel free to contact us.

Twenty Ten Dream Team Print Journalist: Nanama Keita

dominique le roux — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:54:58 +0000

Here is the second post featuring one of our print journalists in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Nanama Keita is a Gambian journalist who has written articles for a number of Africa publications including the The Daily Observer and a range of online websites including Gambia Now.

In this article Nanama talks about the Ghanaian national team being the first team to qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Here is a snippet of the text article. You can purchase the full article the Twenty Ten Project’s Africa Media Online Website

Ghanaian opportunity

Nanama Keita/Daily Observer/Twenty Ten

When Ghana became the first African country to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, the cash register started ringing in the West African nation.
The Black Stars over-came visiting Sudan 2-0 in the Group D joint qualifiers in Accra on September 6, to earn themselves a second successive appearance in the 79-year-old World Cup tournament.
The World’s most prestigious football event, which is played once every four years, will come with its usual tears, controversy and the triumphs and millions of us will be bound to our seats for four action-packed weeks.
Although the tournament will be over in just four weeks, the economic legacy of the 32-team tournament may be felt longer in the cocoa-rich nation of Ghana.
With qualification now in the bag, the Black Stars and their faithful, now believe huge financial opportunities will come pouring into the country.
Projections, based on the team’s first-ever appearance in Germany 2006, suggest the gold-rich West African nation could benefit from up to US$15m.

FOR THE FULL STORY OF 701 WORDS CONTACT pictures@africamediaonline.com

Twenty Ten Dream Team Print Journalist: Joseph Opio

dominique le roux — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:58:15 +0000

Here is the first post featuring some of our print journalists, the previous four entries featured the works of photo-journalists, in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

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

Twenty Ten Project Dream Team photographer: Arnaud Thierry Gouegnon

dominique le roux — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:32:14 +0000

Here is the fourth post in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Arnaud Thierry Gouegnon of the Ivory Coast, has taken a series of interesting photo features over the course of the last several months. One of them has already been featured in an earlier blog post that highlighted the fact that we are now providing our stories in both English and French. Below you can find some images from a couple of Arnaud’s other photo features – Fabriquants de Maillots and Le Numero 9.

Twenty Ten Project Dream Team photographer: Ahmed Jallanzo

dominique le roux — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:52:44 +0000

Here is the third post in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Ahmed Jallanzo is a well respected photojournalist from Liberia, popularly known as “Action in the Lens”. His images have appeared in news papers such as the New York Times and with organizations such as the European Press Agency. Ahmed takes pictures of a range of issues relevant to Liberian politics and society, many of his images focus on the role of soccer in Liberia and its politics.

In this photo feature titled, Technology and Football, Ahmed focuses on capturing images that highlight the impact of technology on the way that soccer is viewed in Lagos, Nigeria. The impact is both positive and negative as Ahmed points out, “Technology is attracting millions of people in Lagos to home videos, large television screens in cinemas and public places. Modern Technology is gradually drawing away people from the live games in stadiums.”

Here are a few images from this photo feature. If you want to purchase any of these images or see the rest of the feature please follow this link:Technology and Football.

French Photo Features Translated into English

dominique le roux — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:38:10 +0000

The French photo features, including their captions, on Africa Media Online’s Twenty Ten website will increasingly be accompanied by English translations. Below is an example of a feature in both French and English. This photo essay, along with all other features on the AMO website, are available for purchase for publication. Please contact us with any questions.

La fièvre Didier Drogba (TG)

The Didier Drogba fever (English below)

Thierry Gouegnon/Twenty Ten

Lieu: Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

De tout les grands footballeurs nationaux et internationaux que la Côte d’Ivoire a connu, le capitaine actuel des « éléphants », (l’équipe nationale ivoirienne de football) ; Didier Dgrogba est celui qui a le plus conquis le cœur de bon nombre de fans de foot tant sur le plan national qu’international. Beaucoup d’entre eux ne jurent que par lui, un amour sans limite dont ils sont des milliers à lui exprimer directement ou indirectement soit, en lui dédiant une chanson, une danse, une marque de bière, une attitude…

Nous avons donc dans notre reportage, approchés ces Ivoiriens, fans de Drogba pour dégager l’immensité de l’amour qu’ils éprouvent pour leur idole.

Location: Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Didier Drogba commands a cult following in the Ivory Coast. Fans hang his picture in their homes and places of work, vendors fill their stalls with football shirts printed with his name, and one man has gone as far as to name an entire village ‘Drogbakro’ in his honour.

The talented captain of Ivory Coast’s national team, The Elephants, has become a brand name. A brewery in Abidjan has produced a beer called ‘Drogba’ and a local mobile phone company has released a new line of cell phones with the player’s name emblazoned on its cover.

Whether it is an individual fan who names his son after the football legend, or a pub that shows its loyalty by having posters of Drogba on its wall, the people of Ivory Coast…

FOR THE FULL STORY OF 268 WORDS CONTACT pictures@africamediaonline.com

Here are a few images from this story taken by Thierry Guegnon:

Twenty Ten Project Dream Team photographer: Emmanuel Quaye

dominique le roux — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:14:01 +0000

Here is the second post in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Emmanuel Quaye is a photojournalist based out of Accra, Ghana. He has produced two photo features for the Twenty Ten Project so far. In the two photo essays that Emmanuel has produced we get a great sense of the historical and contemporary roles that soccer plays in the lives of people in two different parts of Africa – Ghana and Nigeria.

The first feature, The Legends, focuses on the forgotten legends of Ghanaian soccer. These great players have been forgotten in today’s contemporary rush for money and fame, while these legends chose to play for their country out of a sense of pride and duty. “To wear the Black Stars football jersey was once considered a great privilege, and the dream of many young men. Some turned down lucrative offers to play football overseas, all for the love of their country.‘We were made to feel a sense of pride and we were prepared to die for the nation and not for money,’ said one retired football legend. Some of these heroes refused to wear football boots when they toured Great Britain as a mark of the pride they had in their homeland. Despite their glory days and the service they did for their country, many of these soccer legends now live in destitution. Some have died paupers, others are bed ridden or ill and cannot afford medical attention.”

The second feature, Makoko Sedation, focuses on the role that soccer plays in the lives of the inhabitants of the Makoko slum in Lagos, Nigeria. “Soccer sedates the inhabitants of Makoko, a slum in Lagos in Nigeria.The slum with an estimated population of 50,000 people, does not have good roads, the area lacks potable water and the waterside is devoid of a sewage disposal system. This results in high morbidity from malaria, diarrhoea and other infectious diseases.” For many of the inhabitants soccer is the religion that enables them to forget the conditions that they live in, “Friday Oliseh, a resident, said soccer is like a religion which unites a nation. To Kwame Asante, a Ghanaian migrant, soccer is like a medicine which cures all diseases. ‘With soccer you forget all your problems,’ he said.”

Here are some of the images from the two features. You can see more of Emmanuel’s work and those of the rest of the team at Africa Media Online website.

Local photographer brings a national hero to an international audience

dominique le roux — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:12:44 +0000

In this great photo feature, Amos Gumulira tells us all about the “Rising Striker” Chiukepo Msoway of Malawi’s national football team known as The Flames. Amos writes,

“Until recently, Malawian football has been nothing to write home about. The memory of their 1984 appearance in the Africa Cup of Nations was starting to grow dim and supporters of The Flames, as they are affectionately known, were starting to lose hope.
With a grand entrance, The Flames thumped World Cup finalists, Algeria 3-0 on January 11, 2010, propelling them into the quarter final of the tournament that doubled as a FIFA World Cup qualifier.
Much of their success has been attributed to the rising soccer star, Chiukepo Msowoya, who has been nicknamed ‘Wonderstriker’ on the official FIFA World Cup website.”

I have added a couple of the images that are part of the photo feature, which you can find here.

Malawi's rising Soccer Star and 2008 footballer of the year Chiukepo Msowoya plays with the ball at Kamuzu Stadium October 29, 2009 during preparatory training for COSAFA games scheduled for October 31, 2009 in Zimbabwe. © Amos Gumulira/ Twenty Ten Project/ Africa Media Online

Ivorian defenders Bamba Souleymane, shirt no.4 and Gosso Gosso, right, tries to stop Malawi's upcoming top goal scorer Chiukepo Msowoya during a joint 2010 World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations qualifier game between Malawi and Ivory Coast at Kamuzu Stadium in Blantyre, October 10, 2009. © Amos Gumulira/ Twenty Ten Project/ Africa Media Online

Malawi's goal poacher and 2008 footballer of the year, Chiukepo Msowoya during preparatory training on October 7, 2009, for the World Cup, Africa Cup of Nations qualifier game between Malawi and Ivory Coast played on October 10, 2009. © Amos Gumulira/ Twenty Ten Project/ Africa Media Online