Does East Africa need affirmative action to feature at Afcon?

The other day Kenya hit the global news mark when policemen lobbed tear gas at children who were protesting the grabbing of their school playground. I call it the global news mark because many a time only something tragic can earn you a slot on the BBC or CNN news ticker. Truth be told, the grabbing of school playgrounds is quite rampant in Kenya and Uganda. With many public schools not having titles to their land, corrupt fellows quickly grab or sell off parts of the school land starting with the playgrounds. School playgrounds continue being an easy target for land grabbers mainly because many schools focus more on preparing children to pass exams than anything else. There are quite a number of private schools that do not have any grounds on their premises. In fact these land grabbers have also gone ahead to sell the idea that football grounds should not even be in the city centre. After the argument has been sold, grounds quickly turn into shopping malls or office blocks while the sportsmen look on in despair. Some of these things got me thinking again about the enigma that is East Africa and football. The Africa Cup of Nations is already underway and it is disturbing that the whole East African Community bloc of five countries is absent from the tournament. Even Somalia and South Sudan that want to join the EAC bloc are also not in Equatorial Guinea. The same applies to Ethiopia that we relate with when it comes to the LAPSSET project. Only the Democratic Republic of Congo comes close to an East African representative. But the truth is that they are not part of East Africa. All this reminds me of years back when veteran Ugandan journalist Charles Onyango Obbo wondered in one of his columns why countries that can build formidable armies like Uganda and Rwanda can fail to assemble 11 good kickers of a ball. Uganda takes the trophy for always nearly qualifying. Every campaign will see Uganda playing so well only to choke at the last minute and extend a close to 40 year dry spell of continental football. Kenya has managed to produce world class long distance runners as well a rugby team that sometimes locks heads with the bigger teams at the world stage. How they fail to have a football team worth its name is still a puzzle. Surprisingly, Kenya has even managed to have individual players featuring for top clubs in Italy and England the team as a whole remains quite impotent. It is quite disturbing to see that North Africa, West Africa, Central and South are all represented while East Africa is nowhere to be seen. Even when it comes to supporting, many do not have time to watch the games. They are not interested in how Ivory Coast plays. In fact they are bitter that their ‘real team’ Manchester City is missing the services of Yaya Toure. Sometimes I wonder whether our leaders find a moment like at the AU summit to step aside and ask each other what went wrong. I can imagine Kenyatta asking Kagame how he manages to send peacekeepers to Central African Republic, Haiti and Darfur but fail to send a team to AfCON. In response, Kagame would then ask Kenyatta why those marathoners can’t be taught to run with the ball so Kenya can have a competitive football team. At some point maybe Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza would suggest to the other EAC leaders that they should lobby CAF to put the region on an affirmative action programme. Something like giving us 3 points to start with during the qualifying games. On a more serious note though, I think we need to lay a better sports foundation in schools if we are to dream of featuring in the continent’s football tournament. We can start by ensuring that schools have decent football grounds. Not the ones I tend to see where grass seems to be a taboo and players are simply bathing in dust the whole time. With the integration that the region already has, if one EAC country made it to the continent’s football showpiece, it would be assured of support from five countries. It will probably be similar to how African countries always unite to support the few teams that make it to the FIFA World CUP. I relay hope next time we are not just spectators of the tournament but participants.

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Does East Africa need affirmative action to feature at Afcon?