Itamar Dubinsky

Senior Academic

Entrepreneurial Goals: Development and Africapitalism in Ghanaian Soccer Academies (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022)

The book examines the roles soccer academies play in local development in Ghana. It provides a local viewpoint on the agendas and strategies of businesspeople, youth and their parents, coaches, teachers, fans, and vendors to profit from the game. Since the late 1990s, soccer academies – institutions that aspire to produce soccer talents by combining educational and sportive activities - have been springing up across Africa with remarkable speed, evidence of the immense popularity of the sports and the many aspirations it arouses. My book argues that Ghanaian entrepreneurs seek to exploit the game’s popularity to achieve material gains while, at the same time, promoting economic, social, and cultural development in their communities. 

The study regards soccer academies as an expression of Africapitalism, tying together for-profit development schemes with personal and communal growth. The book reveals the successes and failures, as well as the contradictions and complications, that arise when for-profit initiatives aspire to reap social benefits for the entire community. Although Ghanaian academies, at times, promote the use of nefarious practices and raise unattainable expectations, they can also be regarded as engines of local development. Soccer academies can provide educational opportunities, empower youths, advance gender equality, promote health issues, and serve as a source of pride and identification for local fans. They can be a source of mutual help and provide gathering and entertainment opportunities free of charge.

Reviews

“Entrepreneurial Goals creates a new body of evidence on the relationship between African sport and society, a field of inquiry of growing significance. The author’s numerous interviews with Ghanaian coaches, staff workers, players, parents, fans, and others shed new light on the everyday operation of soccer training centers and their wider impact.”—Peter Alegi, Michigan State University

“A valuable contribution to the study of African football academies, their economic and educational viability, and their sustainability. Entrepreneurial Goals is also a lively narration of the friction between Africapitalism, development, and the broader economic and social realities of Ghana and Africa in general.”—Gerard Akindes, University of Salford

“Very impressive. . . . Certainly, Entrepreneurial Goals: Development and Africapitalism in Ghanaian Soccer Academies should serve well high school and college level students, researchers and, indeed, the general reader, who is a football (or soccer) enthusiast.”—African and Asian Studies

“The strength of the book lies in the methodological rigor. The diversity and range of soccer academies, as well as the numerous interviews and extensive observations during field trips that spanned across six years, enabled the author to observe various types of outcomes and impacts. . . . Entrepreneurial Goals provides a broader and more balanced understanding of the impact of soccer academies in Ghana, and Africa in general, than projected in literature.”—The International Journal of the History of Sport

“Dubinsky’s pioneering research on soccer academies in Africa is a highly recommended read for scholars, researchers, coaches, and agents of soccer. The book is well written and thoroughly documented with interviews from participants in their own words.”—African Studies Review

“Makes an essential contribution to the literature on the political economy of sports in sub-Saharan Africa.”—Africa Today

 

More on the book

https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/E/Entrepreneurial-Goals

Postcolonial Dilemmas: Histories of Ties between Israel and African Countries (Pardes Books, Haifa, 2023)

This edited collection, co-authored with Lynn Schler, examines the changing and complex relations between Israel and African states from the late 1950s until the early 21st century. I have contributed two chapters to this collection. In Moshe Beit Halevi and the Green Eagles: The Politicization of Sports Journalism in the Post-Independence Nigerian Press, Schler and I examined the work of Moshe Jerry Beit Halevi, who was sent in 1960 by Israel to serve as the coach of Nigeria’s national football team, the Green Eagles. Based on archival work in the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem and Nigerian newspapers of the time, we argued that the press coverage of the team and their Israeli coach provided a unique vantage point to view political tensions that plagued Nigeria in these years. In Playing with the Boycott: Israel-South Africa Sports Ties in the Apartheid Era, I examined the the reasons that led Israeli sports institutions and athletes to evade the sports sanctions against the apartheid regime. Based on Israeli newspapers, Israel State Archives, memoirs, and academic scholarship, I argue that Israelis did not join the boycott because of professional, Zionist, and national interests. The study provides a novel perspective regarding the wider historical links between the two countries. The examination of such connections between Israel and South Africa demonstrates that similar to the diplomatic sphere, economic and national interests played a more central role than moral considerations.