Gender, Sport and Development in Africa

Authors

Jimoh Shehu 
Anusa Daimon
Molly Manyonganise
Jessie Kabwila Kapasula
Aretha Oluwakemi Asakitikpi
Senayon Olaoluwa
Adewole Adejayan
Lucy Caroline
Mari Haugaa
Sharon Groenmeyer
Ramola Ramtohul
Jimoh Shehu 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.123

Keywords:

Gender, Sport, Development, Africa

Synopsis

To many young people, the term sport has an exhilarating ring; to many older persons, it signifies recreation and leisure. From colonial times, it has been viewed as a means of social control. Increasingly, it is being touted by governments and donor agencies as a self-evident tool of Africa’s development. How accurate are these individual, romantic and moral notions of sport? In this volume, eleven African scholars offer insightful analyses of the complex ideological and structural dimensions of modern sport as a cultural institution. Drawing on various theories and cross-cultural data, the contributors to this volume highlight the various ways in which sport norms, policies, practices and representations pervasively interface with gender and other socially constructed categories of difference. They argue that sport is not only a site of competition and physical recreation, but also a crossroad where features of modern society such as hegemony, identities, democracy, technology, development and master statuses intertwine and bifurcate. As they point out in many ways, sport production, reproduction, distribution and consumption are relational, spatial and contextual and, therefore, do not pay off for men, women and other social groups equally. The authors draw attention to the structure and scope of efforts needed to transform the exclusionary and gendered nature of sport processes to make them adequate to the task of engendering Africa’s development. Gender, Sport and Development in Africa is an immensely important contribution to current debates on the broader impacts of sport on society. It is an essential reading for students, policy-makers and others interested in perspectives that interrogate the grand narratives of sport as a neutral instrument of development in African countries.

 

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Author Biographies

Jimoh Shehu 

is a senior lecturer in physical education and sport pedagogy, and Head of the Department of Physical Education, Health and Recreation, University of Botswana.

Anusa Daimon

is a PhD candidate and lecturer in the Department of History, University of Zimbabwe. He teaches introductory courses in African History, and Gender Studies from the pre-colonial to the post-independence period. His research focuses on migration, citizenship and identity politics, autochthony,
belonging and gender. His publications include, ‘Migrant Chewa Identities and their Construction through Gule Wamkulu Dances in Zimbabwe’, in Bahru Zewde (ed.), Society, State & Identity in African History, Addis Ababa, Forum for Social Studies, 2008.

Molly Manyonganise

is a lecturer in Religious Studies and Theology, Zimbabwe Open University. She was formerly a lecturer in Religious Studies at the Great Zimbabwe University. Her area of specialization is African Traditional
Religion(s).

Jessie Kabwila Kapasula

has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Binghamton University, State University of New York. She is a lecturer at the University of Malawi, Chancellor College, Department of English. She has published with
JENdA Journal and Feminist Africa. She focuses on contemporary African and Afro-Diaspora feminist theory.

Aretha Oluwakemi Asakitikpi

has a PhD in African Art History/Visual Arts
from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She currently teaches in the Department
of Mass Communication, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria. Her areas of research
intersect the fields of communication, history and cultural studies and her articles
have appeared in various international journals, including Nordic Journal of African
Studies, African Review and Jouranl of Communication and Language Arts.

Senayon Olaoluwa

teaches Post-colonial Literature at the Osun State University in Nigeria. His research interests, among others, are exile and cosmopolitanism, globalization, and gender concepts in African popular culture. Some of his publications include ‘Where Do We Go from Here? Niger Delta, Crumbling Urbanscape and Migration in Tanure Ojaide’s When It no Longer Matters Where You Live’, in Nordic Journal of African Studies Vol. 18, 2, 2009; 175-195; ‘Between Magic and Logic: Globalization and the Challenge of Medical Collaboration in Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow’, in Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, Vol. 7, 3-4, 2008; and ‘From Simplicity to Performance: The Place of Second Generation Anglophone African Poets’, in English Studies, Vol. 89, 4, 2008.

Adewole Adejayan

is a postgraduate student at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His current research explores the intersections between religion and African politics.

Lucy Caroline

Mills holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the University of Cape Town. She has done research on sport and development legacy potential of the FIFA 2010 World Cup. She now works for SCORE and Coaching for Hope as a Programme Facilitator, specializing in football and
life skills.

Mari Haugaa

Engh did her Master’s programme at the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town. Her thesis focused on issues of empowerment and surveillance in the lives of elite-level women footballers in South Africa. She has also undertaken several projects related to women’s football in South Africa in the past five years. She is currently the Coordinator for Research and Development for SCORE in Cape Town.

Sharon Groenmeyer

is an independent consultant and external collaborator of the ILO and InWEnt in South Africa. She is a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. She has
published in the South African feminist journal AGENDA.

Ramola Ramtohul

is a lecturer in Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Mauritius. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is currently working on a publication based on her doctoral research, which will be a socio-historical study of women’s political mobilization in Mauritius. She has also published in the South African feminist journal, AGENDA.

Jimoh Shehu 

is a senior lecturer in the Department of Physical Education, Health & Recreation at the University of Botswana, where he teaches pedagogy and sociology of sport. He has been departmental head since 2008. He has previously taught at the University of Benin (Nigeria), Kenyatta University (Kenya) and the
University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). In 1996, he was Deputy Director of Operations at the Centre for Advanced Social Science, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His research interests include discursive construction of physical education and sport pedagogy, sport and development policy analysis; and hierarchies, spatiality, subjectivities and inequalities in physical activity. His recent publications have appeared in Sport Education & Society, Educational Studies, Teacher Development, and South African Journal of Research in Sport, Physical Education & Recreation.

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