Recently this publication ran the story of one Emmanuel Rugamba, a Rwandan – who now also is an American citizen – who is on the way to achieving sports stardom in North America where he plays for the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League – CFL. Here what’s being referred to is American Football, a distinctly different sport from the football we are all familiar with, also known as soccer. American football (also called gridiron) is much more similar to rugby, in it too arms are extensively used, than the football the rest of the world knows. It’s a sport that, if one hopes to play it professionally, requires immense physical strength, married of course to far-above-average skill levels. So taxing is it physically that its players have to wear helmets and shoulder pads, among other protective gear. Rwanda’s own Emmanuel Rugamba obviously didn’t learn gridiron football here, which isn’t played here in any case, or any part of Africa. Rugamba in fact, much as he is a Rwandan has never stepped here. He was born in Zambia; a child of refugees that fled there following the calamities the government of Habyarimana, and the short-lived “interim government” of Sindikubwabo and Kambanda had inflicted upon this country. How or why Rugamba’s parents found themselves in the southern African country is neither here nor there. As a baby he had absolutely nothing to do with why he was born where he was. More important for this story is that his mother together with her children would emigrate to the US, settling in the city of Chicago, with Emmanuel as a two-year old. Theirs is the story of a mother that worked hard raising her kids, putting food on the table, and putting them through school, where one of them accidentally discovered football in high school (and his coach discovered he was unusually good at it). “Manny”, as he is called by family and friends, Rugamba was so good he got a scholarship, to play football as a college freshman for the University of Iowa, in 2017. A couple of years later he transferred to the University of Miami, which was an even bigger football program. From there, the story gets better. In 2021 after college, Manny penned a professional contract, to play for the Cleveland Browns of the NFL – which, to those more familiar with other elite professional sports competitions, is like being recruited to play in the English Premier League – becoming the first Rwandan to do so. This must warm the heart of many a Munyarwanda! One of the things that Manny’s story disproves, I am glad to say as a diehard sports fan, is the absurd notion that “Rwanda cannot produce great sportsmen or women”! We very much could, I am pretty certain of that. Just go somewhere, some place nearby in the outskirts of Kigali, and look at the average muscled young man, such as a “munyonzi” cyclist transporting people up and down the hills, barely breaking a sweat in the process. You will see what I am talking about. We have no shortage of young men and women, the human resource if you will, that if their potential were developed would be elite performers in any field of sport. We have the kids with the strength, endurance, stamina, a whole lot of potential waiting to be developed. The question of how this happens is an important one for a country that’s identified sport as a vital tool to sell our country and put it on the map – up there with tourism promotion – in the journey of national development. But getting there will be nothing short of a monumental undertaking. We are talking of a situation whereby just a decade ago there was next to nothing – well, other than a small, woefully under-resourced soccer league of perennially broke teams – that one could call a national sport program. In a culture prevalent in past regimes, sport was just a small cottage industry to reward a few big fish with titles – minister, president of Olympic committee, et cetera – and opportunities to travel the world; which they did accompanying woefully unprepared sportsmen and women (to events such as the Olympics) that were nothing more than glorified tourists. In many ways this culture; this kind of mentality still infests our sports administrations, meaning the new minister of sports truly has her work cut out for her if things are to change. But at least in one very important area, Rwanda is already taking big strides to achieve the growth of a serious domestic sports industry. It’s devoted serious resources building sport infrastructure, and will devote even more. The question then is, how long will it take before Rwanda can domestically grow the equivalent of Manny Rugamba in any of the sports popular here? It’s a daunting consideration, when one thinks of the differences in environment a young, aspiring athlete in Rwanda must evolve in, compared to a counterpart in the US. The opportunity differences are vast: in accessing the requisite nutrition; in finding the schools – starting in primary school, all the way to Uni – with half decent sport and other extra-curricular facilities; in finding the knowledgeable coaching or nurturing staff... It all seems a lot. But if Rwanda has proved anything, it is that very little is impossible, if people put their mind to it. Only the right mentality is required, across the board. Getting to brass tacks, we could start with “imihigo” in schools, to challenge headteachers with the task of turning Rwanda’s primary schools into nurseries for sporting talent in our young, and the universities to turn into the finished product. A willing government would take charge of practicalities like funding, to get the whole program up and running. Nothing is impossible
