Colonial legacy, minorities and association football in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya is a country that has a good reputation earned through her sportsmen and women, especially the athletes in middle and long distance running. However, it is association football (soccer) that attracted the imagination of the nation as the number one sport. To understand the context of football in Kenya, one should have an idea of the country’s ethnic composition, geographical/regional distribution and colonization. For much of Kenya’s history, her 42 ethnic groups were loose social formations, fluid and constantly changing. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries British colonial rule solidified ethnic identities among Kenya’s people. Colonial administrators associated ethnic groups with specific areas of the country by designating areas where only people with a particular ethnic identity could reside. This pattern of ethnically based settlement and regionalism has persisted in Kenya since it became independent. Given the regionalization of the different ethnic groups, it was easy for football to follow a similar pattern. A deeper look at the evolution of football in the country places the minority and regional orientation in contra distinction to the dominant political class who had no time for the sport. Post‐colonial legacies underpinning the popularity of association football include ethnicity, regionalism, athletic ethic and the formalization of narrowly based football administrative structures that curtailed innovation and entrepreneurship. In this essay, ‘minority’ is conceptualized as ethnic groups having a distinctive presence within a society yet having little political power relative to other groups. Analysing the Luhya and Luo from a minority perspective, the essay shows how they solidified their ethnic identity and nationalism through football clubs, thereby dominating the game in the country to date. Additionally, the support for ethnic teams is analysed using the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) which explains the awareness, attraction, attachment and team allegiance of the Luhya to AFC Leopards and Luo to Gor Mahia football clubs.