Africa Sport in Diaspora (ASID) is planning to launch its activities in London this August. This is trailing the organisational success of the Olympic Games in London last summer.
The organisation had post-mortems of all sorts into the performances of African nations in the Olympiad. Nations like Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria were clearly not happy with the returns our athletes brought from these Games, and a lot of talking had been done so far.
ASID said, “One thing has come to our notice, though – and that is the fact that the nations that DID do well – talking about European nations and the USA – many had participants who actually have their roots and origins in Africa. While we can not fault the decision of these athletes to turn out for the countries of their interest, we also recognise the fact that there are many more from where the Mo Farahs, Christine Ohuorogus and the Phillip Idowus came from”.
“Our schools in England are full of budding talent of African origin, some of whom we might be able to tap and give encouragement to, to participate in sports for their fatherland. This has informed the formation of this group – African Sport-In-Diaspora”.
ASID has been set up with a view to assisting in the scouting and unearthing of young talent – to produce not only young sports stars, but youth-in-education sports stars who would potentially excel for their respective nations in future Olympics, but who would also have the academic background to aid them in comporting themselves and becoming real role models in the future.
The Launch event to mark the birth of the scheme will formally take place on 17 August 2013 at the Greenwich Community College, Plumstead, London SE18.
The Launch event is expected to bring together representatives of youth of all cadre in the UK, of African origin, the community of Africans in the UK, as well as representatives of the governments of Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa to mention but a few.
Subsequently, we plan to set up a scouting process that would discover, mentor and monitor talents so discovered and work with them in liaison with the Ministry and the sports associations. Our aim and objective would be to see that we get a good few athletes competing out of the Diaspora scheme in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and subsequent big competitions in future.
Some of the Ambassadors of the project are Victor Moses (of Chelsea Football Club and Nigeria – football), Johny Akinyemi (canoeist for Nigeria in London 2012), Abi Oyepitan (Team GB athlete with Nigerian roots),
Victoria Okafor (current Miss Nigeria UK and a keen sports and youth leader in the community), Stephen Kiprotich (of Uganda, London 2012 marathon gold medal winner), and Gael Bigirimana (of Burundi, player of Newcastle United Football Club who also grew up in the UK).
Shedding more light on the event, Chief Executive of the ASID movement, Tunde Adelakun said, “It is highly important for us to make that connection between sports and positive impact on our youngsters who are based out here. It goes without saying that there is a huge population of Africans in the country and their children need to be made to see that sport can do them a world of good, if they connect with their countries of origin”.
Some of the speakers at the event, which will run from 12 noon on the day, include top Team GB athlete Abi Oyepitan, who herself is of Nigerian origin, and Johny Akinyemi, a canoeist who opted to compete for Nigeria in the London Olympics last year.
“We have also made sure that we get representatives of governments of some African nations to attend”, Adelakun continued “This is to allow parents, children and community leaders in attendance to ask useful questions and seek assurances from these governments on their plans towards some of the youngsters who decide to pitch their tent with their respective nations.
To this end, Mr Gbenga Elegbeleye who is the Director General of the Nigerian Sports Ministry will be delivering a keynote address at the event. And Mr Charles Bakkabulindi, Minister of Sport in Uganda will also be addressing the gathering”.
The aim of ASID is to use various scouting methods to unearth talent of African origin, and to provide encouragement, mentoring and monitoring to them to points where they can make a choice of how they want to handle international competitions.
