http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21704742-country-overdoing-its-stadium-building-full-time?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/fulltime
Ethiopia’s football follies
Full time?
The country is overdoing its stadium-building
Aug 13th 2016 | ADDIS ABABA | From the print edition
BROKEN windows, fraying nets, chairs with missing legs; the
Yidnekachew Tessema Stadium in Addis Ababa has seen better days.
Rehabilitated by Emperor Haile Selassie after his return from exile in
1941, it was once a proud monument to Ethiopia’s restored independence
following five years of Italian occupation. In 1962 it hosted the
African Cup of Nations (Afcon); the national football team, known as
the “Walias”, won. But the Walias, like their stadium, have struggled
since. In 2012 they ended a 31-year stretch in the wilderness by
qualifying for Afcon. In 2013 they duly crashed out in the first
round.
Enough is enough, says the government. Ethiopians are proud of their
sporting heritage: the country’s long-distance runners are among the
best in the world. “We were the founders of African football,” says
Juneydi Basha, head of the Ethiopian Football Federation. Addis Ababa
hosts the African Union; the government wants it to host Afcon again.
In every big town, new football stands are going up. The federal
government, which is paying, says eight “world-class” stadiums—each
with a capacity of at least 30,000—are being built. Six smaller ones
are also under way in the capital. The flagship is a 60,000-seater (as
big as Arsenal’s Emirates stadium in London) in the centre of Addis
Ababa, being built by the Chinese State Construction and Engineering
Corporation at a projected cost of at least $110m.
Ordinary Ethiopians scent folly. The ruling Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), has a solid reputation for
managing the country’s infrastructure, but the stadium programme has
people talking. The claim that it is simply responding to popular
demand seems doubtful. “It makes no sense,” says Leoul Tadesse, a
local sports journalist. “Building stadiums won’t solve our problems.”
Football enthusiasts cramming into bars underneath the old stadium to
watch European football matches point out that state-of-the-art
infrastructure is no substitute for skills. Just look at England,
which has a rich, fabled league but a poor national team.
Is the EPRDF, which has governed Ethiopia since winning power in 1991
after a decade of armed struggle, scoring an own goal? The country’s
revered former prime minister of 17 years, Meles Zenawi, would
probably not have let the programme kick off. The stern veteran of the
EPRDF’s bush war, who died in 2012, is said to have remarked once that
Ethiopia needs fertilisers, not stadiums. With the country only just
starting to recover from drought—and this week wracked by widespread
anti-government protests, in some of which security forces are accused
of having fired into crowds—those words now seem prescient.
Received on Sun Aug 14 2016 - 09:28:44 EDT