Yamada International House

African issues come to Athens for annual conference


By Maria Gallucci,
Communications Assistant, Center for International Studies

Though Southeast Ohio is thousands of miles away from the continent of Africa, people from around the globe converge in Athens each year to discuss the issue of athletics in Africa. Since 2004, Ohio University has hosted the annual Sports in Africa Conference, which explores the relationship between athletics and broader issues, such as politics, culture and health in Africa.

This year’s conference, entitled “Health, Sciences and Sport in Africa,” will be held February 23 and 24. The symposium will examine topics such as how sports might be used to improve the health of African people and if sports should play a role in development.

The keynote speaker is Manute Bol, a former player for the NBA, a political activist from Sudan and the founder of the Ring True Foundation, which raises funding for Sudanese refugees. Bol also uses basketball and sports to give positive experiences to the Lost Boys of Sudan, an International Rescue Committee program to resettle refugee boys from Sudan to the United States.

“ Ohio University has kind of become the hub within the United States where sports in Africa is talked about,” said Acacia Nikoi, assistant director of African Studies in Ohio’s Center for International Studies. “We think it is important to continue talking about this issue and bringing people to Athens. It is not a huge conference that draws in hundreds of people, but it (draws in) the people who do their work on this. It is people who are really interested and invested in this.”

Sports provide a unique opportunity to discuss issues surrounding health education, development and awareness of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, especially among Africa’s youth, she said.

The center’s Institute for the African Child has been a continual sponsor of the conference series, along with Ohio’s School of Health Sciences and the Center for Sports Administration.

Steve Howard, director of African Studies, founded the institute in 1998 to put the plight of marginalized African children into focus. Nine National Resource Centers throughout the nation focus on African studies, though only the institute at Ohio focuses on the African child.

“We know that all children’s issues are not discipline-specific, so the institute is an opportunity for people from a variety of disciplines to come together and discuss African child issues in a more holistic manner,” Nikoi said.

Nana Owusu Kwarteng, former assistant director of the Institute for the African Child, contributed his time and effort to organize the first two years of the conference series. Kwarten is currently in Ghana.

The Sports in Africa Conference provides a chance for the institute to focus on the positive developments of issues involving the African child, she said on the co-sponsorship.

Such issues include, “How people have viewed sports over the years as a tool of social and economic mobility and to bring political awareness to social injustice, as well as how sports can be used to help cure diseases,” said Winsome Chunnu, assistant director of Ohio’s Multicultural Center.

The annual event was developed by Gerard Akindes and Matthew Kirwan in 2004 as a means to address an issue few have thought to bring up in an academic institution—sports as an avenue for development. Both continue to organize the conference each year.

Akindes, who was born in Benin in West Africa, is a doctoral student at Ohio and a technology coordinator for the university’s College of Health and Human Services. Kirwin, an Ohio alumnus, is now a doctoral student of political science at Michigan State University.

Many times, people have a limited perspective on sports and generally only focus on the competitive aspects, Akindes said. “They don’t see all the social, cultural, political and inter-disciplinary approaches to sports.”

The conference creates a niche for Ohio because people are not specifically working on this topic elsewhere, Akindes said.

Chunnu said the conference is a wonderful opportunity for Ohio to host an event of such caliber. “Our panel is usually so diverse and we have people from all over the world. You are not going to find that every day in Southeast Ohio.”

Invited speakers to this year’s event come from countries including Congo, South Africa, Ghana and Kenya, as well as American universities such as Michigan State, Salisbury and Albany State.

The past three themes of the Sports in Africa conference hosted at Ohio include a “Sports, Youth and Africa” symposium, a workshop on “African Sports Across Disciplines,” and a symposium that discussed “Women, Gender and Sport in Africa.”

Additional information on the conference series and its journal, Impumelelo, can be found online at http://www.ohiou.edu/sportsafrica/INDEX.HTM

The Institute for the African Child’s Web site is available at http://www.ohio.edu/afrchild