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{
    "id": 806948,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/806948/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 158,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nominated, ANC",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Godfrey Osotsi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13172,
        "legal_name": "Godfrey Osotsi",
        "slug": "godfrey-osotsi"
    },
    "content": "of the Academy shall be to among other things, establish and manage sports training academies; appreciating that Article 6(3) of the Constitution provides that a national State organ shall ensure reasonable access to its services in all parts of the Republic, so far as it is appropriate to do having regard to the nature of the service, this House urges that the Government through the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Arts to establish sports academies in every Constituency. This country has to deal with the problem of youth. One way of dealing with it is by ensuring that the youth are engaged in gainful activities like sports. Sports is not just a recreational activity. Sports has become a major economic activity world over. It is time that this country harnesses the economic potential that comes with sports. As we are talking right now, the entire world is glued on their television sets watching World Cup. If you see how countries fight to host World Cup, it tells you the importance of sports. A lot of foreign exchange earnings, a lot of income to support the country emanates from sports. Many other benefits such as social and cultural emanate from sports. We are now facing a major problem of drug abuse among our youths. The youths are idle, they have nowhere to go and play. Most of the playgrounds have either been taken away by land grabbers or have been utilised for other things. It is now necessary for us to devolve sports activities and projects to our various regions especially at the constituency level. The Government under the Vision 2030 came up with the national sports academy at Kasarani and they are putting some money in that project. It is important that we change the strategy because the Government strategy was a top-down strategy where you establish the national academy and gradually start the regional academies. I think for sports, it works well if it is well approached. Talents are in the villages. We therefore need to set up academies at the county and if possible in future, we consider setting up academies at the ward and in sub-location level, so that we tap these talents at an early stage. We have a lot of talent in this country. If you go to your village and watch young boys playing football, you will be amazed by the skill and the talent they have. Then you wonder why we do not have a strong national team. It is because we have challenges with scouting, we only pick youth who are in Nairobi and say we have picked a national team. We have youths in villages who play better but they have no access to these facilities that are in urban areas. So, it is important to set up sports academy. We also have to look at the cultural aspect of the sports. There are some sports in this country which are basically traditional. For example in western, Kakamega region, we have bull fighting. This is a sport that should be nurtured. As we promote foreign sports, we should also promote our traditional sports. These sports will also be managed under these academies. I have talked about the economic value of sports, it is huge. You can imagine if this country had 1000 Victor Wanyamas. Victor Wanyama earns over Kshs20 million a week. How much money would we be bringing to our national basket? A lot of money! Many countries in West Africa, sports is one of the highest income generating activities. Countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast, get a lot of foreign exchange earnings from football because they have invested in academies. It is now time for this country to consider serious investments around the issue of sports. If you look at global figures, you will be amazed. Globally, it estimated that the world makes about Kshs60.7 trillion a year from tourism associated with sports, travel tournaments such as World Cup among others. It is also estimated that in UK alone the sport sector makes Kshs 2.7 trillion. You can see that is almost close to the Budget of Kenya. So, this is an area that if well developed and well managed, we can make a lot of money from. Our own Kenyan experience is on betting. It just started the other day. These people are making trillions of money every year. These are youths who are betting every day and making The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}