Introduction

Summary

‘From now on, We give permission to all those who have a natural talent, to prepare, since We intend that Ethiopia should participate in world sports and athletic organizations.’

When Ats’ē Haile Selassie I declared his ambitious aim in 1947, Ethiopia had already entered the world of modern sports. Physical education was about to have its own department within the Ministry of Education and Fine Arts (further referred to as Ministry of Education or MoE), which promoted school sports through inter-school competitions. Football was not only the most popular game amongst the male (urban) population, but an Ethiopian Football Federation had already organized a league. Ethiopia had founded its National Olympic Committee, officially recognized in 1954, and planned its participation in the world's most important sports event. Thus, Ethiopia belonged to the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to make the continent visible on the global athletic scene. In contrast to African athletes from colonial contexts, who represented Britain, France, or Portugal at major sporting events, Ethiopians competed for Ethiopia.

With a few exceptions, existing scholarship on modern sports in Ethiopia has focused on the present, narrowing the lens to long-distance running and football. This largely distorted picture of Ethiopia's sports scene, past and present, ignores the diversity and history of modern athletic practices in the country. Thus, it is time to bring to the fore a much broader variety of disciplines and their social positions. This book specifically asks in which societal context modern sports emerged in Ethiopia. What role did it play in the period that scholarship on Ethiopian history has broadly described as Ethiopian modernity? I argue that sports as an everyday practice developed into a means to shape modern subjectivities, and explore the role of physical education in modern schools and volunteer organizations, especially the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and the scouts movement in Ethiopia. This book shows the importance of sports in urbanization and the production of leisure spaces as part of Ethiopia's aim to transform into a modern empire.