By Onesmo Alfred McBride Ngowi, the President and Chair of the Board of WABA
Let me first share a few of the responsibilities I had in my “previous life” at the USA based International Boxing Federation (IBF) and the UK based Commonweal Boxing Council (CBC). I share them because many of you still may not know why I left the IBF and CBC to build the World Africa Boxing Association (WABA) and what drove this globally relevant work.
I was responsible for Administration, Sanctioning, Rating, and Supervising. In these roles, I coordinated cross-functional activities in Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf from all divisions needed to shift or adjust the activities of the IBF.
From Administration to Supervising, I managed the execution of such portfolios for key decisions on titles to the introduction and to Corporate. This role gave me insights on what it actually takes to move the sport of boxing in Africa to a NEW LEVEL
Another important role I led was sourcing. I was responsible for implementing the source of promotion after designing a specific individual promotion. These processes determined how and why IBF was so popular in Africa, Middle East & Persian Gulf having processed and built a robust infrastructure that supported the activities of its titles in the region…
So what does all this have to do with Africa’s benefits?
In the IBF’s world where I come from, I had a front-row seat on how its global activities worked and most importantly it became evident to me that Africa was not playing a major role in that world – It felt like Africa did not exist within the consciousness of the global playing decisions; such decisions that determined Africa boxers ratings as well as title distribution – the likes of which brought China to the front lines of the IBF in general!
Over the past 20 years, I have worked tirelessly to advance these discussions and shed more light on how to close such gaps leveraging my platform the progress for Africa at every IBF convention. Here are 5 reasons why this problem still persists today:
Lack of Insight on Africa Boxing: The world is yet to understand what Africa has to offer and sadly Africa’s boxing and boxing administrators are not doing enough to sensitize and educate them.
If promoters and world based sanction bodies like WABA do not know what you have, they will not come to your doorstep – the few boxers from Africa who benefit from global boxing find their way to such promoters and sanction bodies and not the other way round.
Lack of Patience: At WABA, we support those who seek to develop effective Boxing Market Entry strategies. Many people think that this is an overnight task- no it is not because I have worked in this for over 40 years. For example, it is important to build boxing infrastructure such as training competent and professional Ring Officials. Also to have part of sanction fees to remain in the particular country where the title is held to help boxing to grow instead of sanction bodies exporting it 100%.
Although it is a painstaking process that often requires great efforts and patience, even years to execute an effective strategy, it works. For those still thinking it is overnight they are missing the full picture.
Foreign Aid (Assistance) Mentality: In my Boxing Trade and Investment Masterclasses, I teach how Africa boxing has to cross over from dependency on foreign assistance to pursuing a partnership. Many African national commissions would not do what they should do because they are expecting assistance and development from foreign bodies to show up and do the work.
Permit me to declare this: Development assistance did not make China’s boxing industry what it is today! Development assistance cannot take credit for what China boxing has accomplished in the world. So, I say to Africa’s boxing leaders stop depending on foreign help – They represent a crutch that would never support Africa in running the race to capture current and future opportunities at the boxing scale.
Investing in Knowledge Acquisition: The knowledge that would transform African boxing is not free! Because of the foreign assistance dependency mindset – many think that someone out there would bring them the knowledge needed to transform the boxing landscape.
The reality remains that Africa must now become a student to advance to the levels they want. China took this on – they traveled the world to glean from the best in class. They brought that knowledge back home and began implementing such. Transformative knowledge has to be invested in.
Process Minded: The global boxing market has its standards and requirements and all those that seek to engage have to follow such. That landscape would not change for Africa.
When policies such as professionalism in boxing seek to spur growth – RED tape barriers still exist that Africa must overcome. That is why WABA is in place to help Africa achieve its GOAL in global Boxing!
