Life, Love, and Football in Kenya

By Peter Alegi | November 25th, 2009 | No Comments


In the year of Africa’s World Cup, it’s easy to overlook the host continent’s “other” players. Take these teenage girls in rural Kenya, for example. They organize, manage, referee, and play football in the Moving the Goalposts program. But this is not just about the game. Health education and social support are vital components of Moving the Goalposts.

Parents in Kilifi District have embraced the project: “But I have one problem in my house with Mbeyu [her daughter] and this issue of football,” says the mother of one of the players. “If she comes home from the football field and they have won, we’ll hear the whole story, how she scored, we’ll all laugh, the whole house will know. . . . But if they have lost, ha, Mbeyu—she’ll be ill and the whole house will be ill! . . . If she’s lost, there no laughter in the house.” (Read more of the girls’ stories in Sarah Forde’s gripping book Playing by Their Rules.)


African Media and the World Cup

By Peter Alegi | September 14th, 2009 | No Comments

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The 2009 Highway Africa Conference, held recently at Port Elizabeth’s new World Cup stadium (photo above), helped African media be better prepared to cover the 2010 World Cup, according to Guy Berger, head of Rhodes University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies. African media should work to ensure that “coverage is not only focused on the glitz and glamour aspect of the World Cup,” Berger said, “but must be extended to critical evaluation of socioeconomic consequences.”

In a keynote address, Saleem Badat, Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor and licensed football coach, cautioned African journalists against uncritical reporting: “As a supposedly African event, it remains to be seen how, in what ways, and to what extent the media coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup will differ from that of previous World Cups.”


Click to read full article here.