Chan tourney offers Ruto respite from e-Citizen heist, other mega scandals

Unlike his other unsubstantiated self-appropriated successes against his predecessors, President William Ruto rightfully earns the bragging rights for pulling through hosting rights for major continental sporting events into Kenyan soil. The thrilling exploits of the national team, Harambee Stars, at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, is a welcome distraction from the annoying e-citizen and other mega scandals unravelling from the Auditor-General’s reports.

Whether Harambee Stars will make it to the finals or not, the African Nations Championship (Chan) offers Kenyans, and the East Africa region in general, a rare opportunity to enjoy a moment of nationhood and entertainment. This comes at a time when top political leaders of the three host nations, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, are suffering from public distrust for gross violations of human rights, especially against their opponents or critiques.

This week, despite scares that football fans may take the ‘Wantam’ crusade to Kasarani, to embarrass the Kenya Kwanza administration, Kenyans have proved that they are resilient and could exercise restrained at opportune moments to showcase the best of our country. Political foes and citizens alike have shared a platform to cheer the national team.

This re-affirms the well acknowledged and documented power of sports to unify people, cultures and ideas for the long-term good of a society. For example, it is well accepted that one of the genius of Nelson Mandela was to exploit the Rugby World Cup of 1995 to heal the wounds of apartheid and bring a divided country together. In his book, ‘‘Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation’’, John Carlin explores how Madiba rallied a divided and wounded country in supporting their rugby national team, the Springboks.

On June 24, 1995, South Africa won that World Cup at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, against their formidable opponents, the New Zealand. This was not just a win, but a moment that turned hearts away from the pain of years of the atrocities of apartheid.

In a speech delivered at a conference on May 4, 2010, in Dubai, former United Nations Secretary-General, the late Kofi Annan, asserted that sports can help nations and the world at large not only to address the challenges of prejudice, heal divisions and champion tolerance, but also to drive growth and development.  

According to Annan, in addition to bringing huge economic benefits to local communities, sports also bring about social change, shape societies and the world for good.

He admitted that as a Secretary-General of the UN, they often held some jealousy on the power and universality of sports. For instance, at a time when the UN had a membership of 192 members, FIFA had subscriptions of 208 member states.

In separate article posted on February 8, 2018, Mark Ein, the founder and CEO of Venture House refers to sports as better placed to deliver the theme for the World Economic Forum of January 2018, on creating a shared future in a fractured world. Ein opined that in stadiums or fields where we play and exercise together, offer the most powerful platforms to unite us as a people, regardless of our beliefs.

However, beyond the joy and excitement that comes with hosting major regional or international sporting events, economists have no consensus as to whether the host country benefits or loses overall. For example, outside the fields, how does the East Africa co-host economies of the Chan 2024 benefit?

In an article published in the International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management on February 2025, Adam Popek, examines the long-term benefits of large sports events like Olympics or FIFA World cup to host nations. These long term benefits includes increased sports participation, infrastructure development, economic investments in sports and cultivation of local talents.

Other studies have highlighted attraction of tourists and development of the hospitality sub-sector, initiation of important infrastructure projects and showcasing a country and her cities. This is arguably true for countries like South Africa, that not only did significant improvements of her sporting facilities, but also enhanced their public transport system in the run-up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics also led to major improvements of public transport systems not only in Beijing city, but for other cities of China. However, for other economists, the huge costs on the investments necessary to host such events more outweighs the benefits that they produce. This is because sports infrastructure are quite expensive, their maintenance costs high, they take-up high value real estate and lack adequate post-event uses to cover the maintenance costs.

Often, host countries, especially developing ones end up diverting public investments from more inclusive growth programmes or leave the government with huge debts. A good case in point here is the Sh44.7 billion loan facility that Kenyans will have to pay for the Talanta Stadium long after Chan and African Cup of Nations 2027. Quantified into their resultant opportunity costs of public spending, economists argue that overall, the host country is left worse-off, even for advanced economies.

From the foregoing evidence, one may then wonder how economic history will judge President Ruto’s legacy for pulling a feat that the former President Daniel Moi could not pull in 1996 and Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018. Either former President Mwai Kibaki shied away from attempting it all together or relied on his economic mind to keep off such enormous sporting investments.

While it is too early to evaluate what the hosting of these major regional football tournaments will cost and the resultant benefits for the East Africa Community (EAC) economies, three factors will be defining, especially for Kenya.

First, the bragging rights for the leaders of the region have been earned for their keeps. They have done what their predecessors could not achieve and placed the EAC as a football powerhouse that the rest of the continent will have to content with in the coming years. If the three co-host sustain the momentum and successfully host African Cup of Nations in 2027, then we must remove our hats in their honour.

Second is whether the three or either of the presidents of the co-host nations shall be able to exploit the unifying power of the game to heal internal conflicts at home and mend trade rivalry among the EAC member states. To realise long-term economic benefits for individual countries and collectively for the region, the public goodwill demonstrated in our stadiums will need to permeate into boardrooms where the future of the region is discussed and analysed.

Finally, and especially for Kenya, given the unravelling levels of plunder in almost all the public projects or programmes of the last three years, any economic rents padded into the infrastructure developments will be a sure deal breaker. Driven by the urgency of the projects in line with strict timelines provided for hosting rights, the renovations and procurement of the contractors have been done outside public scrutiny.

So far, the cost of the Talanta Sports City project, including potential conflict of interest in the acquisition of the land on where it sits, has opened a lid that this would be one of the most expensive sporting facility in the world. The odds are that wheeler dealers will be walking away with billions by the time we are done with the tournaments. We can only hope that future public audits shall not unravel the horrors that we have to endure from the ongoing scandals.