Kenya rules the world: The secret to Africa’s rising success in sports

Julius Yego poses on the podium during the victory ceremony for the men's javelin throw athletics event at the 2015 IAAF World Championships in Beijing on August 27, 2015. PHOTO | GREG BAKER |  AFP

In Summary

• I think the answers are hiding in plain sight.

By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
More by this Author

Kenya just had a blast at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing. It came top of the medals table, the first time an African country has done it at any major international athletics meeting.

Kenya also became the third most successful country in the games since they started in 1983, after the US and Russia, with 50 gold medals and 128 overall.

The Beijing games also revealed a deepening diversification of Kenyan athletics away from the long and middle races, with “YouTube” champion Julius Yego hurling the javelin the second longest distance ever thrown in the modern format, and Nicholas Bett winning the 400m hurdles – a hitherto very “un-Kenyan” event.

As it happened, on Wednesday, the South African coastal city of Durban was officially named as host of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, making it the first African city ever to stage the sporting spectacular.

My own sense is that South Africa is on course to be the African country that fields most competitors in events across the board. Its young athletes are doing everything; running, jumping, swimming, riding horses, shooting arrows, rowing, name it.

All in all, good days at the office for African athletics. Even athletes from that hermit kingdom, Eritrea, are coming into their own, and the Ethiopians remain Kenya’s main rivals in the old long races.

Noticeably, though, they are not diversifying into the javelin and hurdles like Kenya.

The reason is the subject of this column today. People say countries like Kenya have the advantage of athletes who grow up and master running at high altitude, and success has created an ecosystem that enables runners to thrive.

INDIVIDUAL EXPLORATION

Recently I have started seeing articles that claim that Kenyans and Ethiopians who live at these high altitudes develop some strange muscle in the leg that enables them to prance faster than other peoples.

I am not sure. I think the answers are hiding in plain sight. For example, Yego needed uncensored Internet and affordable broadband to master the javelin. Kenya doesn’t censor the Internet. Ethiopia does. And broadband is cheaper and works better in Kenya.

Also, there is no political orthodoxy in Kenya, enabling a broader culture of individual exploration. There is political orthodoxy in Ethiopia, with the ruling EPRDF calling all the shots, which makes for a more restricted space for moonshot undertakings. A Yego, thus, is more likely to emerge in Kenya than in Ethiopia.

However, both Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s present form in the long distances have a common source for their success – economic policy.

Whereas when a country’s sportsmen and women bring honour by triumphing, people turn up to receive them as heroes at the airport upon return, patriotism is a poor motivator for excellence. The greatest incentive to do most things well, including winning marathons, is money. The next motive is glory. Country comes third.

Therefore, Kenyans, Ethiopians and other African athletes started doing wonders in large numbers after the economic reforms of the 1990s liberalised domestic foreign exchange markets.

In the past, nearly all African countries forbade their citizens from holding foreign exchange. If you earned dollars abroad, you would be obliged to hand them over to the government upon return, and you would get the local currency equivalent at rates set by Treasury officials.

Often, the rates were as low as 10 per cent of what you could get on the black market. If you failed to hand over your foreign exchange, you risked being arrested.

When reforms allowed us to keep foreign exchange in local banks and allowed market forces to determine exchange rates, the seed was sown for the present generation of rich marathoners. Being national heroes became important, because smart athletes could use it to cash in on endorsements.

For example, commentators noted that Yego is charismatic and his success is a “good” story, and because of that, he can fully expect to swim in endorsement money in the future.

Ezekiel Kemboi, on the other hand, is a more emphatic “eat your heart out” steeplechase champion, but he sticks it to those he beats. David Rudisha, and former marathoners like Paul Tergat, are Mr Nice Guys and likeable. They are better carriers of the flag, and therefore, more lucrative endorsement vehicles.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3