The scenic Gahanga Cricket Stadium in Kigali with its three-vault pavilion resembling a bouncing cricket ball must be among the most iconic sports venues in Africa. Its manicured green adds to the allure and, given its convenient locality, one immediately sees why the stadium website touts it as a venue for hire for events other than cricket. The small stadium is a modest example of asset utilisation and revenue generation, something one does not often see of sports facilities around the continent. And, built with the support of a British charity as a development project, it also contrasts sports infrastructure in much of the continent which has been built with the support of the People’s Republic of China. A casual search on Google shows that China has built stadiums and other sports facilities in 37 out of the 54 countries in Africa. Among the most elaborate of these is the Congo Brazzaville’s Kintélé Sports Complex consisting of a 60,000-seater stadium with athletics track, 10,000-seater sports hall (Palais des Sport), aquatics complex, tennis and volleyball courts and other facilities. Completed in time for the 2015 All Africa Games, the games are almost the only major event the complex appears to have hosted since. This is a fate familiar anywhere you look in countries around the continent where many sports facilities put up to host major events end up not fully utilised or marketed. Other facilities are just past their prime, coupled with poor maintenance and lack of proper infrastructure planning when the sporting facilities were built. This state of affairs might seem poor, but it is where the opportunity lies. Sports infrastructure is often the pillar of the sports ecosystem, determining not just the state of sports but the commercial opportunities to exploit. With a growing economy across the continent, despite the Covid-19 pandemic slowing things a bit, and an emerging middle class with young and eager sports fans the opportunities become evident in a global sports industry projected to be worth more than $600 billion by 2022. A significant part of the projected growth will be due to infrastructure construction and other development, as well as spinoff businesses including food and beverage as well as betting. This economic potential is seeping through in increasing number of countries. In this light may be seen Rwanda’s recent and upcoming projects to reap the dividends by enhancing its infrastructure. Amahoro Stadium, the country’s national stadium that also features an indoor arena (Petit Stade) in Kigali, is set for upgrade and refurbishment into a Rwf220 billion complex of various games that will include a shopping mall and a major hotel. The Turkish contractor tipped for the project also constructed the Kigali Arena that is proving quite a draw for continental basketball. While the Rwanda project seems a Build and Transfer arrangement, the private sector is already well versed with commercial models that governments around the continent are increasingly keen to tap into in public-private partnerships (PPP). It is well established how private sector expertise in PPP arrangements such as Refurbish, Operate, Maintain and Transfer (ROMT) often are profitable ventures, including the more traditional Build, Operate Transfer (BOT) that include designing, constructing, operating and managing arenas, stadiums and other infrastructure. Key to this is employing technology in the commercial models that convert the infrastructure into revenue centres that might include signage, advertising and entertainment amenities and such like. Technology also creates unique experiences that tap on the emotional and financial investments of growing number fans, currently expended in sports bars across the continent where the young middle class frequent in their hordes. To reap the dividends, however, governments across the continent must enable the investment environment with guidelines for asset utilisation and monetisation as well as incentives to integrate PPP into their sports policies.
