As we come to the end of a beautiful summer of sports, I would like to offer my congratulations to all our athletes, especially the medallists. If Africa was a nation, its record of 13 Golds, 12 Silver and Bronzes would have seen it place 8^th overall.  This is remarkable when we consider that the gross total of the sports budgets of all African nations combined would have barely placed it in the world’s top 30. My personal favourite moment was, of course, Letsile Tebogo’s thrilling 200m win, which was a poignant tribute to his mother who passed away weeks before the Olympics. The medallist that was most heart-gladdening though, was 17-year old South African sprinter Bayanda Wazala, who helped the 4 x 100m squad to silver. He graduated from high school on his return home. He represents the aspirations of African greatness we constantly see in our young people. Our hope is that the governments and their sports authorities recognise the immense power and potential of sports as a tool for social and economic development as well as a source of really influential soft power for Africa, with its attendant benefits.

It is always heart-warming to see Africa celebrating all of Africa on the world stage. We see this in sports more than in any other sphere of activity – how beautiful it would be for us to harness that spirit of celebrating Africa by Africans manifest itself in more meaningful and impactful ways – in the day-to-day reality of our people. It is a cause of extreme sadness and frustration to see how there is still so much xenophobia and Afrophobia in so many African nation-states, which results in the scapegoating of and physical attacks on migrants from other African countries. Apart from the fact that selfish politicians exploit this to excuse their underperformances, this is also a damning indictment of the education system in those countries. If we really understood how the borders that we celebrate and protect so viciously were created, and how through the years we have worked together across those borders to ensure that as Pan-Africanists, none of us are free until all of us are free, this would not even be an issue.

Almost 70 years after Ghana became the first African nation to win independence, the AU and its predecessor OAU should have found ways for the continent to move beyond the colonial strictures that have divided us by those arbitrary lines drawn up in Berlin 160 years ago. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which 48 nations have now signed up to provides a great opportunity for this – freedom of movement of goods and people takes us back and forward to a place of who we really are.

Moreover, we need places like The Africa Centre to be beacons of hope and positivity where all of Africa can find that genuine home away from home and create a sense of ownership, a space of joy, celebration, respect, connection, debate, education and understanding that ultimately unites us all. That is a dream worthy of a gold medal for us all.

 Olu

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My Cultural Highlight of the Last Month:  Our Wole Soyinka @ 90 programme between the 19^th and 27^th July was a marvellous celebration of everything that has made Africa’s 1^st Nobel laureate in literature such an iconic figure. The great guy’s presence and especially his audience with children was an experience nobody there would ever forget.

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Coming Up at The Africa Centre:

Women of the Elephant Tusk: Ndi Otu Odu by REWA

 AGAINST THE ODDS: AFRICAN MIGRANT WORKERS IN EUROPE - JAMES OMOLO

Word of the Month:

“There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?” – Wole Soyinka.

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