By Barrie Alpha
Needless to say, apart from religion, sport is the only forum that can bring people together for a common goal. It is possible that sport, through the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the International Sports Federations could succeed where the United Nations has failed to promote world peace.
However, to the contrary, sport has been used, in the past, as a political weapon to express dissatisfaction by boycotting the Olympic Games. If sports can be used to achieve political objectives, it is possible to use sports to achieve and promote peace initiatives at local, national and international levels.
Since sports can play such important roles in the process of national development, in Sierra Leone, there must be deliberate plans to promote and develop sports on a wide scale in order to achieve maximum benefits. Unfortunately, this has not been the case, as sport development is being marginalised in budgetary allocations.
A good strategy is the use of youth soccer programmes in the slums to bring hope to the lives of thousands of destitute children in the slums. Taking the advantage of soccer fever in the slums, this programme can make a major breakthrough in creating sustainable programmes in the fight against the rampant drug abuse in the slums, slow down the crime rate, make an impact on school dropout and create positive attitude and hope among thousands of children in the slums.
By ensuring that all the players of the team hail from the slums, they will become role models and a source of inspiration to all the children in the slums. Imagine if such players are required to do certain hours per month of garbage cleanup in the slums, they would inspire the kids through sport to be positive and to accept the challenges in life.
According to the saying, the strength of the rope lies in its weakest point, similarly the strength of the national development lies in its weakest point. In using the above analogy, any meaningful national development must focus on its weakest points. Therefore our national development strategies must focus on the poor in the urban and rural sectors in order to achieve sustainable development.
There is little doubt that the poor in both the urban and the rural sectors are often overlooked at national economic strategic plans. Following the above discussions it is evident that using sport to raise the level of living standard in the slums is imminently plausible.
The poor children in the slums cannot be held responsible for the abject poverty and the helplessness in which they find themselves. Their problems are manifested in drug addiction and high rates of crime among the many social problems. However, a team from the slums can convincingly demonstrate that this situation can be reversed using sport as one of the means to bring solution to the many problems in the slum.
Although the tasks of trying to solve the problems of the slums seem too overwhelming they are not insurmountable. In general, there are many impediments that hamper the development of sport in Sierra Leone such as lack of planning, lack of information, poverty and subsequently poor funding. Most of these problems could be solved through equitable distribution of resources, prioritisation and good planning strategies.
In fast tracking women’s issues, nothing is more important than sports. As a talent based activity, equality of the sexes is sacrosanct. But for a long time it has only been the African men bringing Olympics medals to their countries. But recently the African women are now rising into the limelight of big time sports. Although the momentum is on, there are many factors that militate against the development of women sports and they still have a long way to reach the level of European and American women especially in sport requiring high skill development.
In general, for both men and women in the continent of Africa, sports that require high level of skill development are lagging behind the rest of the world. Although Africa is rich in natural economic and human resources, there are several logistical problems making it rather impossible to tap the talents, which are known to be quite abundant in virtually every sport.
During the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics, however, the Africans featured competitively in 3 sports, namely boxing, athletics and soccer out of about 26 Olympic sports. There is need for the African countries to have full knowledge of their own resources and potentials and the desire to exploit them for their own benefits. Kenya and Ethiopia have succeeded in middle and long distance running with minimum investment.
There is an urgent need to promote sport technology in Africa so as tap exceptional talents as part of a campaign to raise the standards of sports worldwide. Secondly, the potential of using sport as a springboard to achieve other human values directly or indirectly in order to raise the standards of living conditions need to be fully exploited.
As already stated many exceptional sports talent in Africa is untapped because of lack of proper network for talent identification and development. In recent years, Kenya surprised the world by beating the famous West Indies cricket team, a sport that has always been a preserve for the developed commonwealth countries and the Asian nations.
It is evident that Sierra Leone is losing the war against social problems, the spread of infectious diseases especially the HIV/AIDs, the drug abuse and the crime rate. Certainly, sport can be used to change the attitude of the people in the slums and bring hope to their lives. As already pointed out, a breakthrough in sport development at national and international level may reduce poverty, ethnic strives and genocide, such as the one already mentioned. This is not implying that sport is a panacea to every social and economic problem.
When we associate sport with health standards it means that the maladies such as malaria do less damage to individuals who are healthier than those who are already weak. Also, healthy living and stress free environment have been known to promote the quality of life and prolong the lives of the people infected with HIV/AIDs. Over and above the economic links, the benefits of sports and its association with health standards are unlimited. We can no longer underestimate the potential of modern sports as an industry that can positively impact on the social, economic and political parameters in the process of nation building. Sierra Leone has taken little effort to acquire the above benefit as a result of lack of development in sport.
In the modern era, sport has gone through a series of transformation to evolve into an industry and a showcase for entertainment extravaganza. Since the advent of industrial revolution, the electronic and the print media have not only popularised sport but have brought top-level sports to every family via the satellite and the Internet. While this electronic revolution has created a positive impact on the love and popularity of sports viewing, there is an imminent danger of creating a society of spectators and people who will appreciate and enjoy sports passively.
One most intriguing question is whether professionalism and commercialisation of sport has taken precedence over the important requirement of sport for all. This point becomes evident when an important marathon race is staged to favour television viewing rather than the important consideration of the health of the athletes. While professional sport has certainly an important role on economic parameters there is need to look at both sides of the coin in terms of sport values versus economic gains.
In addition to the benefits already discussed, the sport industry has the potentials for employment opportunities to tap talents of the experience staff forced into early retirement through retrenchment processes. Sport industry also offers opportunities to young professionals in physical fitness and sport science.
By organising sporting events here at home, our athletes can contribute to our economy the way they do when they compete in foreign countries.