Davies Banda

Sport and the fight against HIV/AIDS in Zambia: a partnership approach?

Sport is being increasingly recognized for the contribution it can make to the Millennium Development Goals and, in particular, the response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In both sport-for-development and HIV/AIDS sectors, partnerships are advocated as an effective approach to achieving policy goals. This exploratory study examined the nature of partnerships involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that use sport as a tool for HIV/AIDS prevention in Zambia. Sensitized by development literature, the study utilized an inductive, qualitative research approach primarily centred on interviews with key stakeholders from a variety of governmental and non-governmental agencies both based in Zambia and supporting sport-for-development programmes from overseas. A large number of different partnerships were identified by interviewees that varied significantly in terms of their purpose and form. Within the Zambian sport-for-development sector, organizational fragmentation and competition for resources provided by overseas agencies inhibited the development of partnerships aimed at policy co-ordination across the whole sector. Productive bilateral partnerships existed between sport-for-development NGOs and between these organizations and health-based NGOs. However, the sport-development sector lacked integration into more strategic partnerships that addressed HIV/AIDS policy issues. Incremental progress is identified as the key to future improvements in partnerships involving sport-for-development NGOs. Further research that examines how partnerships influence the delivery of programmes within specific communities would also enhance understanding of the contribution of sport to development efforts.

Towards sustainable programme design? An examination of CSR initiatives within a Zambian SfD NGO.

Sport-for-development (SfD) programming in Zambia is at a crucial turning point since its inception in the late 1990s. Weak domestic relations with state government bodies have left the sector isolated and dependent on foreign aid and corporate sponsorship mainly through corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes. This article considers the implications of the CSR funding landscape for one SfD non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Zambia. 16 semi-structured interviews with SfD practitioners and stakeholders were conducted to better understand how CSR funding impacts programme design, development and sustainability. Thematic analysis revealed three key themes: 1) positive partnerships; 2) parachute partnerships; 3) challenges with partnerships. The implications of these findings are presented in a conclusion which stresses the need for a (Global) South-centred CSR Agenda in SfD (Idemudia, 2011).

Sport for development in Zambia: the new or not so new colonisation?

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine the experiences of indigenous participants in Global North led sport for development programmes. The chapter considers whether the experiences of indigenous participants reflect the neo-colonialist claims levied at such initiatives. Design/methodology/approach – The chapter draws on findings from a qualitative study utilising in depth interviews with 14 young women who participated in a sport for development initiative and 8 mothers and grandmothers. Findings – The research illustrates how we can construct sport for development initiatives as neo-colonial activities imposed on indigenous participants by Global North agencies. However, we argue that this alone does not capture the complexity of experience at local level and the young women we interviewed highlighted the important place sport for development programmes have within their lives and how they reshape them to provide resources that are valuable for them within their communities. Research limitations/implications – The challenges of navigating power relationships as Global North researchers working in the Global South are highlighted and their potential impact on the research discussed. Originality/value – The chapter highlights the importance of understanding indigenous experiences in sport for development programmes. Such local level analysis is lacking within current literature.

A Postcolonial Approach to Understanding Sport-Based Empowerment of People Living with HIV/ AIDS (PLWHA) in Zambia: The Case of the Cultural Philosophy of Ubuntu

This article focuses on the findings of a small-scale qualitative study that sought to explore how local sub-Saharan cultural discourses interface with dominant western sport for development and peace (SDP) discourses in order to facilitate or inhibit sport empowerment for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Underpinned by postcolonial theory and empowerment theory, the study set out to investigate the sport empowerment of PLWHA as colonized “others,” within the context of the indigenous (African) cultural philosophy of Ubuntu. Data are drawn from 23 one-to-one in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted with participants of an SDP sport-based program entitled Positive and Kicking (P&K). Fieldwork observations and documentary evidence are used as supporting data. Findings provide insight into the way in which Ubuntu was central to the development of sport empowerment for PLWHA. In particular, participants identified social connectedness and mutual support as vital to their collective empowerment negotiations. Data analysis demonstrates the importance of centralizing cultural discourses in order to achieve locally meaningful development.

Sports and Politics in Postcolonial Africa

Chipande and Banda explore the interplay of the complex relationships between sport and postcolonial politics in Africa. They discuss the instrumental role that sport played in nation building and projecting a positive image of the African continent. Their chapter highlights Africa’s regional and international elite sporting accomplishments. The authors go on to discuss the emergence of Pan-Africanist sports bodies and how they influenced the shaping of modern sport in Africa. As well as tackling racial discrimination, Chipande and Banda highlight African leaders’ attempts to use sport for propagating their political power and dominance. The chapter concludes with a look at the burgeoning sport-for-development projects in Africa which are highly influenced by foreign agendas.

Sport, development and the political-economic context of Zambia

This chapter examines how the wider political and economic context in Zambia has been influential in shaping the historical governance of sport and the expansion of the SfD ‘movement’ in the country. As the previous chapter has shown, within the academic literature most attention has been paid to the global expansion of SfD; a further, smaller body of work has considered the emergence and development of particular SfD organizations and programmes. What are largely absent are attempts to connect these various levels of analysis and explore how the emergence of SfD in particular localities has been influenced by wider political and economic trends affecting both sport and ‘development’. The analysis in this chapter therefore addresses a current lacuna in understandings of SfD. Within the book, it assists our overall aim of localizing global SfD, by offering a detailed account of how SfD in Zambia reflects the influence of multilayered political and economic contexts. This provides the foundation for our later chapters, in which we examine both how SfD is delivered by NGOs in Zambia, and how young people respond to it. In exploring these connections, the chapter shows how the development of sport sectors in Zambia, particularly in the area of SfD, reflects wider trends in the country’s political governance and development approaches. Some aspects of these trends are specific to Zambia, but others are shared with other African countries. Broadly speaking, the governance of development across various international contexts has progressed through three phases (Batley and Rose, 2011), and in this chapter we explore these through a historical timeline which considers firstly, Zambia’s immediate post-independence period in which expanded social and welfare services were state-provided; secondly, the subsequent imposition of neo-liberal reforms and policies; and thirdly, more recent developments in the relationships between the Zambian state and civil society. As with all such analyses, the temporal boundaries between phases are blurred, and this is especially the case when we examine the relationship between trends

Sport as a development partner

This chapter considers how partnerships and partnership working, in the broadest sense of these terms, are enacted, structured and influential in relation to SfD in Zambia. The significance of partnerships emerged early in our involvement in Zambia, where it soon became apparent that much of the SfD work being undertaken in the country was dependent on the establishment and development of partnerships with other organizations operating in local communities. The fragmentation and lack of co-ordination across the Zambian SfD sector that were identified in the previous chapter also suggest that attention to partnership working is pertinent. Partnership working has also been consistently prioritized in many of the documents that emerged from the UN interest in the field. The final report on the International Year of Sport and Physical Education, for example, suggests that:

Globalizing Sport Studies series editor’s preface

There is now a considerable amount of expertise nationally and internationally in the social scientific and cultural analysis of sport in relation to the economy and society more generally. Contemporary research topics, such as sport and social justice, science and technology and sport, global social movements and sport, sports mega-events, sports participation and engagement, and the role of sport in social development, suggest that sport and social relations need to be understood in non-Western developing economies, as well as European, North American and other advanced capitalist societies. The current high global visibility of sport makes this an excellent time to launch a major new book series that takes sport seriously, and makes this research accessible to a wide readership. The series Globalizing Sport Studies is thus in line with a massive growth of academic expertise, research output and public interest in sport worldwide. At the same time, it seeks to use the latest developments in technology and the economics of publishing to reflect the most innovative research into sport in society currently underway in the world. The series is multidisciplinary, although primarily based on the social-sciences and cultural-studies approaches to sport. The broad aims of the series are to: act as a knowledge hub for social scientific and cultural studies research in sport, including, but not exclusively, anthropological, economic, geographical, historical, political science and sociological studies; contribute to the expanding field of research on sport in society in the United Kingdom and internationally by focusing on sport at regional, national and international levels; create a series for both senior and more junior researchers that will become synonymous with cutting-edge research, scholarly opportunities and academic development; promote innovative discipline-based, multi-, interand trans-disciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches to researching sport in society; provide an English-language outlet for high quality non-English writing on sport in society; publish broad overviews, original empirical research studies and classic studies from non-English sources; and

Sport for development in policy, practice and research

Sport has a lengthy history of servicing ‘social development’ objectives. The contemporary SfD movement is thus following a well-known tradition that includes the use of sport to support, for example, ‘muscular Christianity’ in the nineteenth century and diverse development aims in the twentieth (Beacom, 2007; Kidd, 2011; Darnell, 2012). The use of sport for these purposes has been underpinned by assumptions that sport can be beneficial to individuals and also to ‘society’ – by, for example, promoting inclusion, regulating undesirable behaviour or contributing to public health. From some perspectives, therefore, SfD in the twenty-first century might appear to be no more than ‘old wine in new bottles’ (Kidd, 2012). In practice, however, while the current SfD movement has strong associations with both its more distant historical legacy and its recent past, it combines these with unprecedented scale, complexity and ambitions. This amounts to a step change in expectations of what sport can deliver. This chapter will explore the global development, growth and operation of contemporary SfD. We do this, in part, by reviewing existing research on SfD. In this way, the chapter fulfils two key purposes in developing our analysis through the book. First, the broad contextualization offered here situates subsequent chapters that seek to ‘localize’ global SfD. Second, our approach in the chapter also enables identification of themes and understandings emergent from the increasing academic research on SfD as well as exploration of the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of this research. To these ends, the chapter covers the global emergence of SfD, the expectations that this attaches to sport as an agent of social change, the array of organizations and practices that operate within the SfD ‘sector’, and debates about the SfD ‘evidence-base’. The final section of the chapter then considers our approach to localizing the global understandings of earlier sections. We explain the alignment of our research with the actor-orientated sociology of development advocated by Long (2001) and discuss how this may complement, challenge and extend existing knowledge on SfD.

Sport-for-development and the struggle for subaltern voices to be recognised: a response to Manley, Morgan and Atkinson

ABSTRACT In their article entitled, ‘Mzungu!’: implications of identity, role formation and programme delivery in the sport for development movement, published in volume 8(3) of this journal, Manley, Morgan and Atkinson focus on constructions of volunteer identities using Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis of social interactions. Their empirical work is based on an international volunteering placement within the sport-for-development (SfD) sector in Zambia. The authors highlight social interactions between UK student volunteers and host country social actors as encounters that influence volunteer identity, role formation or identity disruption. We offer a response to their article with particular attention to critiquing the knowledge production and programme development approaches employed to undertake research among economically marginalised communities. We draw on postcolonial theory and Long’s actor-oriented approach to capture of alternative narratives in SfD research. To support our critical response to the limited application of the dramaturgical perspective by Manley et al., we further apply four of Goffman’s perspectives to analyse social establishments. By so doing, we bring to the fore social processes within which the agency of local social actors is neglected by Manley et al. Instead, the authors state their sampling limitations. We argue that it is the responsibility of privileged intellectuals in global North institutions to reach out to subaltern voices rather than resorting to stating limitations of sampling techniques. Such limitations simply extend the marginalisation of global South voices and exacerbate asymmetrical powers which enable those with resources to undertake SfD research to define the ‘other’.