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Sport for development: What can we learn from the Olympics?

By August 7, 2024No Comments

In 2000, Nelson Mandela stated that:

“Sport has the power to change the world, it has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else can, it speaks to youth in a language they understand, sport can create hope where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers; it laughs in the face of all types of discrimination.”

Sport is perceived to be a vital tool in the fulfillment of development goals due to its vast reach and popularity, as well as its association with positive values. Global sporting events furthermore create a global communication platform to address key development issues. The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development has recognized sport as an essential tool for the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, describing sport as “an important enabler of sustainable development.”

Image Source: ChildFund Sport for Development

Sport for development (the deliberate use of sport in the attainment of development objectives) has been gaining traction since 2000, with it being seen as most effective in targeting the following sustainable development goals:

  • Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger: sport provides transferable life skills to increase employability and connects vulnerable individuals to the community; sport can help prevent diseases that make an individual unable to work and at risk of incurring high healthcare costs.
  • Achieving universal primary education: school sports programs can encourage school enrollment and participation, and sport-based programs can provide alternative education opportunities.
  • Promoting gender equality and empowering women: sport challenges gender norms, facilitates social inclusion, provides leadership and achievement opportunities, and fosters self-esteem and empowerment for women.
  • Reducing child mortality: increased physical fitness can increase children’s resistance to some diseases, while sport can also help prevent high-risk adolescent pregnancies and facilitate the roll-out of sport-based vaccination programs.
  • Promoting health/preventing disease: sport can prevent and manage chronic and infectious diseases, enhance mental health, and reduce healthcare costs. Sport programs can also facilitate social inclusion for individuals with traditionally stigmatized health conditions such as HIV/AIDS.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed describes sport as:

“[having] the power to align our passion, energy, and enthusiasm around a collective cause. And that is precisely when hope can be nurtured and trust can be regained. It is in our collective interest to harness the tremendous power of sport to help build a better and more sustainable future for all.”

Image Source: Somerset Activity and Sports Partnership

Whilst there’s been a lot of excitement about the potential of sport as a tool for development, empirical findings of its efficacy have been mixed. After all, sport alone cannot solve deeply rooted social problems. Sport has been found to be an effective tool in reducing crime, violence, and anti-social behavior among vulnerable young people in the UK, while sport-based employability interventions have shown success in fostering job retention and academic continuation.  Sport can be an effective avenue through which to empower vulnerable populations outside of formal education systems. Moreover, sport for development interventions can help level up health inequalities through improved physical and mental health outcomes. However, all these positive examples involve more horizontal donor-recipient relationships; short-term programs funded through vertical partnerships are less likely to achieve their goals and similar positive outcomes.

The concept of sport for development has, however, been criticized from a postcolonial perspective, with top-down approaches to development aid being described as reproducing marginalization within socially deprived communities while maintaining extant power structures. Projects that position the Global North as donor and the Global South as subservient beneficiaries risk reinforcing historical global power imbalances. It is therefore vital to ensure that sports development projects are community-led. The most effective sport for development programs integrate community action and non-sporting activities for a more holistic approach. Sportanddev.org argues that sport should not be seen as a means in and of itself, but as one tool amongst many to be utilized in the pursuit of development objectives.

Image Source: Getty Images

And how does the Olympics interact with this? Paris 2024 has launched ‘Impact 2024 International’, a project seeking to promote development through sport in Africa, in partnership with the French Development Agency. This isn’t the first project of its type, with development objectives increasingly integrated into Olympic activities since 1992. The International Olympic Committee funded initiatives to promote sport among war refugees in 2012 and consolidated this through establishing the Olympic Refugee Initiative in 2017. Moreover, the International Olympic Committee has been a long-term collaborator with the UN office for the sustainable development goals. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach describes the Olympics’ commitment to development as follows:

“Sport is the low-cost, high-impact tool to support all countries – big or small, rich or poor – to build together a more peaceful, healthier, more equal and more sustainable world for everyone – 365 days a year.”

Moreover, the 2016 Olympic Charter describes “the harmonious development of humankind” as one of the fundamental principles of Olympism.

The Olympics has also been seen as an important global platform for developing countries to attain national prestige and soft power, with newly independent African states historically seeking to join the International Olympic Committee closely following independence due to the organization’s perceived prestige. The global popularity of events such as the Olympics has led to many developing countries investing heavily in elite sport as a deliberate development strategy.

However, whilst many developing countries invest heavily in sports in the hope of attaining increased global prestige, the contribution of Olympic success to a country’s positive international image is not a given. A key case study here is China, where Olympic medal success has not led to an increase in positive global perceptions of the government.

It can also be questioned whether the Olympics itself maintains historical power imbalances and is therefore noncompliant with development objectives. After all, 45 high-income countries have won 71% of Olympic medals from 1896 to 2018. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Vietnam account for 24% of the world’s population and only 0.2% of Olympic medals.

Image Source: Ashley Landis / Associated Press

Moreover, an ongoing conflict between the Chinese swimming team and the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) is highlighting issues in anti-doping policy implementation gaps, with individuals within the Chinese Olympic camp questioning the disproportionate drug testing they’ve received. In 2024, Chinese swimmers were tested on average 21 times; Australian swimmers in the same period were tested 4 times on average with US swimmers tested 6 times. Last week, when Pan Zhanle spectacularly broke the men’s 100m freestyle world record, his achievement was not met with celebration on the global stage, but with suspicion.

This comes in the same week as Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has been accused of being a man following success in the women’s 66kg boxing. When athletes from the Western world succeed at the Olympics, it i seen as a given; when athletes from the developing world succeed, it’s met with incredulity and suspicion.

Image Source: AP Photo/John Locher

Is the Olympics truly a meritocracy serving as a platform for developing countries to elevate their status globally, or is anti-doping a new frontier in surveillance hegemony, wherein developing countries are held under higher levels of surveillance than historic global powers? Postcolonial scholars (such as Doty, 1996) have noted that international surveillance marks a distinctive form of neocolonialism, wherein the hegemon is not held under the same level of surveillance scrutiny as the surveilled Global South.

The Olympics cannot serve as a platform for development until its participant states are treated equally and given equal chances for success.

 

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