Africa, Are You Ready For Some Football?

By Bill Littlefield
Sep 8, 2010, 3:01 PM
1 Comments

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Will Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, eventually hold football games? (babsteve/flickr)

BOSTON — The first American football game in Africa.

Are we sure this is a good idea?

We have exported McDonald’s, and you can probably watch “So You Think You Can Dance” in Lagos and Kampala.

Does Tanzania really need blitzing and clotheslining?

Apparently they’re going to get it. The Global Kilimanjaro Bowl is set to occur on May 21, 2011, “under the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro, following two football clinics for local youth.”

Much of what is scheduled to happen during the Drake University football team’s visit to Tanzania in the spring will doubtless be salutary.

The Bulldogs will engage in community service projects for three days at an orphanage in Moshi. The Drake players and coaches will also attempt to scale Mt. Kilimanjaro, as will their opponents, an all-star team from Mexico. The two teams will meet at the top of the mountain and hoist their respective flags.

Come to think of it, that last bit may not entirely delight Africans with memories long enough to recall the various flags that have been jammed into their mountains, plains and mineral deposits over the past couple of centuries.

But, OK. U.S. football players may well benefit from getting off the field and into the African hills. Can the same be said of Africans who will witness American football up close for the first time?

A cursory search has revealed that there is a Tanzania Netball Association, and a Handball Association, and a Swimming Association. Golf, darts, tennis, rugby, badminton, judo and Scrabble have Tanzanian associations all their own, as do wrestling, karate, cycling, table tennis, boxing and hockey — though perhaps not the kind that’s played on ice. My understanding is that numbers of Tanzanians also run pretty well.

So are they ready for some football? I wonder if anybody has asked them.

And if the Global Kilimanjaro Bowl turns a profit, how are they going to feel about the event becoming the Bank of America Global Kilimanjaro Bowl a year or so hence?

Hooray for international travel and the growth it can encourage among the travelers. So say I to the students at Drake.

Hooray, as well, for community service and mountain climbing. But why not leave the flags at home, and the football equipment, too? Think of what you’ll save on baggage fees.

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Chris

Dear Bill, thank you for writing this piece, but I have to disagree with your opinion of this initiative. I was born and raised in Cameroon, and although I am a natural skeptic myself, I think that it is unfortunate that you chose to ignore all the obvious positives of this initiative to focus on the potential and unlikely negative. Your intentions might have been to warn Africans of the possible side effect of this project, but what your article does is to scare Africans into believing that all initiatives of the sort have exploitive goals. It is a rather common tactic in the U.S. — the use of fear to get people not to do things — in my experience. Yes, we were colonized and are still to some extent today, but it is up the African countries and their governments to stand up against it. We can’t be afraid to open our doors to a historical event like this one because we are afraid of what hoisting flags on mount Kilimanjaro might remind us. I, for one, think that this is a great initiative, as the World Cup was, to show that Africa is capable of handling challenges; to show that not all African countries are plagued with wars or with starving children with flies on the corner of their eyes. This is not, in my humble opinion, an attempt to push football down the throat of Africa, nor is it a neo-imperialist tactic. If anything, I see this as an honorable way of bringing the world together on the motherland at a time when there is so much tension in the world. Having a Mexican team play against an American team on African soil is a big deal. Tanzania can handle it and is ready for it. If you want to help Africa, try writing more positive articles… Articles showing Africa and its respective countries as places that, despite the fact that it still lags behind, can and will overcome these obstacles. Articles that don’t portray Africa as a weak continent that is incapable of defending itself but focusing on the strengths of the continent and its respective countries. Tanzania needs this publicity, and this is a great opportunity for them to show their country to the world. This will increase the influx in tourists hence boosting its economy.

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