MAGOGO: How football can be used to solve the challenge of unemployed youth

The unemployment rate for young people in Uganda ages 15–24 is 83%. This rate is even higher for those who have formal degrees and live in the urban area. This is due to the disconnect between the degree achieved and the vocational skills needed for the jobs that are in demand for workers.

There is no doubt that Uganda is seated on a time bomb that could explode soon. Just like the common adage says, an empty mind is a devil’s workshop, the challenge of having such redundant young people would result into several vices that will be dangerous to the country.

Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) President Eng. Moses Magogo believes football and sport in general is one of the ways the government can curb the challenge of unemployed youth without necessarily incurring a lot of money.

Below is an excerpt on the aforementioned topic.

I write to discuss a very important topic in my view and that is how football can be used to solve the challenge we have of the youth.

In Uganda, 4,000 babies are born every day, 77% of the population is below the age of 30 and Uganda is one of the top five countries in the world with the fastest growing population. Now when you put together all these demographics, they create a situation of very many young people who are not employed, with a lot of energy and time. And for me I call this a time bomb that if it is not managed very well, it becomes a challenge to the society where we are living.

It is not only the youth who are not employed, incidentally even those who have genuinely worked very hard, have exactly the same challenge. So as a nation, we need to look at a way or ways of trying to solve or find a solution. If you look at it, even you who has tried to work very genuinely, it will get to a point whereby these young, hopeless, desperate people who must also live a life, will definitely look at those who have worked genuinely and think that probably you are the problem why the situation looks the way it is.

Therefore, I propose football, I propose sport as a solution that can be used to solve. And what are my reasons?

There is nothing that consumes a lot of energy like sport and genuine consumption of energy. If you put the young people into a situation of playing sport for leisure but also at a competitive level, it brings out the usage of energy more usefully. And I think this is possible because sport is just a talent, it’s an inborn talent and when young people are given an opportunity to play, eventually compete, then we are served or use or consume this energy very usefully. Therefore, I position football, I position sport saying that it is the solution. It is not as expensive as the very many solutions that are being looked at. And for me, I would like to recruit everybody into thinking like me to make a case that we can use sport to solve some of these challenges.

Now when you are hopeless, any situation that comes along with you can be used to consume the time. I have always been joking that the reason why there are many people going to the Pentecostal churches is simply because there is hope. Because of divine intervention when you pray overnight or whatever form of praying, probably some of your challenges in life are going to be solved. Maybe you will get a job, wife or husband and that hope carries very many people. But lately, there are very many young people involved in betting and the reason is simple because betting also offers hope and this hope is instant that you could get cash. Therefore, very many young people are recruited in the activity of betting but we want these young people to be recruited in sport and there are very many values that as a government, as a country that we can benefit from sport.

Let me be more exact and I will take Kampala as a pilot study. This can be done across the whole nation but Kampala has gotten five divisions and I’m trying to be hypothetical here to try and create a solution. Just imagine, if government decided to construct two sports centres with at least an artificial turf for football in each of these centres and these are ten centres we are talking about, using Kampala as a pilot. You would imagine, from 6 in the morning to midnight, those are 18 hours. Very many young people are going to play and in the process you are going to consume a lot their energy but at the same time, you will be creating hope because naturally, there are going to be emerging elite footballers or sportsmen and we know how much football or sport has turned around very many lives. People coming from a viscous circle of poverty but in the process because there has been sport, somebody is simply talented and then he has been offered an opportunity and facilities, then eventually he/she is going to become an elite and some of these athletes not only represent and win honours for our country but also turn around the living.

I will give you examples of places which have been used, known, on their own to create very many athletes and also provide an opportunity of very many young people to play. I will give you an example of Kawempe, those who know Kawempe Kutaano, it is a bare ground and right now there are trucks of sand that park there but it has produced very many footballers like Ibrahim Sekagya (former Cranes captain). But if this is converted into an artificial turf that is managed, the entire community of that area will probably benefit from using that facility. The same thing with Nateete Kutaano what they call Kaala ground, same thing with Mess ground in Makindye, very footballers have emerged from this place. Villa Park Nsambya itself and then in Luzira. So you would imagine how many athletes you can tap from such places. And if you have not observed of late, there is a new emerging business. There are individuals who have put up grounds with lights and very many people who are paying a lot of money to go and access these places. But there are very many people living in poverty in the slums, in Katanga and Kisenyi who may not have the ability to go pay but this doesn’t mean they don’t have talent.

So for me, I believe that if we position sport, it could be a solution to very many trials that have been done. I have been very aware that government has operation wealth creation, it looks for young people in organized groups and they are given an opportunity or money for the livelihood and convert that economic activity into a living. Some of them are doing welding, others are using washing bays. But there is football. The game of football today is an economic activity and already organized. There are very many groups of young people call them football cubs if you want. Very organized, with organized regulations and undertaking an economic activity called football.

In Uganda today, there are over 20,000 registered footballers, each of these paid by someone. Basically, there is someone who is playing football and earning out of it. It could be little money but the fact is that there is money being earned by 20,000 Ugandans for playing football. Now you would imagine that if a properly organized infrastructure system, and I’m talking about Kampala for the moment, would avail very many young people an opportunity to play and therefore probably an opportunity to earn. But you would imagine that these organized units are also financed under the operation wealth creation or the livelihood for the youth, then definitely they would undertake their economic activity called playing football. Because when you play football, people buy football, people pay to watch games if its good football and it is an economic activity under very organized structures called clubs managed by FUFA, CAF and FIFA, properly organized economic activity for young people where we are sure that their energy will be consumed and some of the vices that probably would attract our people because they are hopeless will come into an activity that gives them hope.

Ladies and gentlemen, I call upon you to join me in this campaign to make sure that we use football or sport. And we do not need a lot. When I talk about two artificial turfs in each division, ten artificial recreation centres in Kampala, they do not cost more than $5M (About 30 billion Uganda Shillings) in total and this is affordable, it can be done. It is a question of priority; it is a question of positioning what we are saying. The football clubs that are playing in the Uganda Premier League are employment centres. They are not different from washing bays or groups of young people organizing themselves into an economic activity. They are organized and their economic activity is playing football because we are aware that there are very many people who pay to go and watch football, then when football is sold, these young people under their management earn and get a living.

Let us position football, let us position sport to be able to be looked at that if it’s an investment which is made, in a shorter or long time, we will not only realize elite athletes representing this country to the benefits that come with that but also giving hope to very many people who may not end up being elite. I’m not going to talk about the national health budget that very many young people would be involved in sport. I’m not going to talk about the forex that is earned by the foreign footballers who are living outside the country, to the teams that would be coming to play with us. I’m talking about the mass involvement of young people, giving them hope and creating them into more useful citizens.

 Join me, together we can make this. In football we say, It’s our game, It’s our country and I can also say, For God and My Country.

The author of this article is the Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) President, Moses Magogo