Football in Uganda: New Football Academies Will Improve Facilities and Opportunities

 

Much-loved around the world, football is a popular and valuable sport. Investors in football demand secure and impactful opportunities, which some believe has had an adverse effect on the sport, particularly in the lower leagues and those outside of Europe. 

However, the huge sums of money moving through football have allowed entrepreneur Jonathan Bennion-Pedley to establish and invest in soccer academies in East Africa. 

Uganda is an African country that is currently under-represented. It does not meet the international standards for coaching, it does not have quality facilities, and the players are not offered adequate mentoring. 

On top of these issues, the national associations in Uganda are not fit for purpose. As a result, Investment Owl and Jon Bennion-Pedley hope to make the necessary changes to improve football in Uganda. 

Introduction to the Ugandan Football Academy

Investment Owl and Football 

Investment Owl is investing in football to support the next generation of footballers in the region, who have been under-represented in the past. Whilst the European leagues do represent players with African heritage, footballers from Africa itself have not had the same access to professional football. 

Working from its offices in Uganda and Ireland, Investment Owl has experience in a range of industries, and its investment in football will be achieved thanks to a simple and proven strategy. 

Case Study: Football Academy in West Africa

The Strategy 

The first stage of the strategy is to build an academy that focuses on specialist training and mentoring, cutting-edge sports science, and the highest possible code of ethics. This top-level academy will hold auditions to find the best talent in the country, using it’s excellent facilities to enrol the top players. 

The academy will develop each player’s talents, after which they will be placed with sister clubs in Europe and the United States. The academy will also play a long-term role in each player’s career, helping them to sign permanent contracts and maximise their skills and opportunities. 

The Goal

The proposed academy will be built on an 8-hectare plot of land located within 80-kilometers of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. A sponsorship pledge with a renowned sports brand has already been secured, as well as a commitment from the coaching team of one of the best European football clubs. 

The next step is to raise $1 million from investors, who will end up becoming 50% stakeholders in the Ugandan football academy. These funds will be used to build the academy itself, as well as for running costs during its first five years of operation.

 

Investing For Good: A Brief Overview of Impact Investing

 

Around the world there is a growing desire to address climate change challenges, such as poverty, financial inclusivity, and other increasingly important and urgent issues. This desire has created a new type of investing – impact investing – which prioritises social and/or environmental benefits. Rather than investing in certain projects for pure profit, impact investors puts their money into projects that will reap rewards for the environment and communities. 

Examples of investment options that are appealing to impact investors include clean-tech businesses that are creating environmentally-friendly solutions, and not-for-profit organisations that work to create improvements in communities. 

Impact Investing Tips: Seek Credible Information

Different to a traditional investor, an impact investor looks at the following factors when making an investment: intent, contribution and measurement. 

The intent of impact investors is to find the causes that they are passionate about and to identify the beneficiaries of their investments. Impact investors must identify the environmental and/or social challenges that they hope to improve with their investments. The impact investor’s contribution should also be shown to have made a demonstrable impact, either financially or non-financially – showing how their donation helped to achieve a goal. Investors must also find a way to measure how their investment has created a positive impact in social or environmental terms, and they should keep track of their progress in order to amend their investing where necessary to achieve their stated goals. 

As Jonathan Bennion-Pedley knows, there are many different ways for investors to make an impact. Most impact investors fall into one of two categories: the ‘impact first’ investor or the ‘finance first’ investor. 

The State of the Global Impact Investing Market

An ‘impact first’ investor looks to invest in projects that will directly contribute towards an issue. Enterprises that offer products or services that create a positive impact on the community are favourable to an ‘impact first’ investor, and whilst some of these enterprises are not-for-profit, others do generate a profit; however, this profit simply enables their work to continue. 

In contrast, a ‘finance first’ investor looks to invest in for-profit companies that operate in the area of environmental and/or social change. An example of a suitable company for a ‘finance first’ investor is a housing company that delivers sustainable housing. 

Jon Bennion-Pedley has founded a business that gives advice and analysis on fund generation. Popular with the younger generation of investors, impact investing benefits companies that have committed to environmentally and socially-minded practices, and investors tend to invest in the organisations and initiatives that reflect their own ethics and interests.

Impact Investing: Important Aspects to Consider

Introducing the Work of the J10:10 Charity

The J10:10 Charity was founded by Jonathan Bennion-Pedley to deliver vital education and healthcare to children in Uganda. Self-funded by Jon Bennion-Pedley for most of its life, J10:10 has been responsible for building both a hospital and a school, which it continues to operate.

The J10:10 charity works on numerous projects aimed at improving quality of life for people living in rural Africa, which include providing clean water and sanitation, healthcare, compassion and education.

The charity has a particular focus on empowering women through the provision of education for girls in aeras where this may otherwise be inaccessible. The infographic attachment looks at the statistics for female education in sub-Saharan Africa and the importance of educating girls.

Statistics for Female Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Clean Water

In a time when most of the western world takes having access to clean, safe and convenient drinking water for granted, there are still over a billion people on the planet whop cannot say the same. For some, gaining access to clean water requires backbreaking journeys every single day, trekking through an inhospitable landscape to reach the nearest source.

For women and girls this journey can be even more perilous, as they run the very real risk of being attacked, assaulted or raped while being sent to fetch water. However, the only alternative to making this unsafe trip is to collect rainwater from puddles and pools which can be affected by animal faeces, which often results in people drinking contaminated water and becoming ill.

Many people in rural Africa die from drinking contaminated water. In fact, more children die from diarrhoea caused by drinking unsafe water than from AIDS and malaria combined. This is why it is essential for the health and progress of people in deprived areas of Africa to be given access to safe drinking water from sources that are close to home. J10:10 works to introduce rainwater harvesting tanks, water purification systems, fog harvesting and other technologies to ensure everyone has access to the basic human right that is clean drinking water.

More information on the practice of fog harvesting can be seen in the short video attachment to this post.

Sustainability: Introducing Fog Harvesting

Gender Equality

In Uganda, as in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, women have a lower social status than men, This is despite the fact that they typically work equally as hard as men, alongside maintaining the domestic side of life and taking sole responsibility for childcare, cooking, cleaning and other chores.

While changing the attitudes of adults is a long and arduous process, often with limited results, changing the beliefs of children has the potential to result in future generations that are more equal. The J10:10 charity operates a nursery and boarding house in which children are taught the values of equality and shown daily that, while there may be differences, we all have something to offer. By instilling values of equality at an early age, it is hoped that societies will begin to evolve as these children attain adulthood and in turn have more influence on their communities.

The PDF attachment looks at ways in which improving gender inequality can boost outcomes in terms of eradicating poverty.

How Improving Gender Inequality Can Help Eradicate Poverty

Medical Care

J10:10 has built a medical centre close to Kigazi Village in Uganda, which provides medical care to villagers in the surrounding region. This includes an out-patient department, maternity care, immunisation programmes, medicines, and other healthcare services. The six staff, housed in accommodation also provided by J10:10, are able to treat more than 500 patients a month and provide a safe environment for childbirth.