Friday, May 11, 2012

An African Chess Federation


Its not everyday that you get a chance to impact positively on a global scale!

When we set out to form African Chess Lounge, we had a vision of making Chess in Africa an everyday sport where the welfare of the players was guaranteed and people could make a living through playing chess the same way they do in other sports like soccer, golf, athletics, cricket ad infinitum.

The more we  travel this road the more we see it as a reality. If anyone says otherwise, they have no best interest for the sport, or alternatively they benefit from the sport living in the shadows. We don't want that.
The Movement 
Our approach has been 4 pronged, from online chess, chess equipment and supply, chess training  and a chess awareness campaign ranging from chess on Tv, broadcasting live tournaments and a chess blog http://africanchesslounge.blogspot.com/ .
Africa 
We have taken the African continent as our playground and are making giant steps in our stated vision. One thing however has become obvious, to really do this, we need the whole African chess community to speak as one voice and this way we can implement some actual reforms which will be of benefit to people.

To give you an idea. Other sports like soccer for instance are run by FIFA, an equivalent to FIDE, which in turn works through CAF ( a Continental body) something we don't have for chess, which in turn works with country federations like SAFA (South African Football Association) or ZIFA (Zimbabwe Football association) equivalent to our chess federations like BFA ( Botswana Chess Federation), Malawi Chess Federation and so on.

Now you can appreciate the efficiency of such an organization, when it comes to implementing goals and supporting local federations in their initiative. If we had such a body for instance in chess and its only goal lets say for arguments sake was to organize 10 Fide rated tournaments per year which is a fairly easy task. Now being modest lets say we got 5 international Masters from this exercise you can imagine the rate of progress we would make in terms of opportunities for the players.

Not to write a manifesto but, lets say pursuing the same line of thought, this body was responsible for funding the tournaments with the support and back up of FIDE, you can see how easy it would be to get a company thats continental like FNB (First National Bank), BP (Fuel Company), Total, Castle and so on. With the help of local federations its easy to see how this could easily produce results.

Having said that, at the end of the day having a bright idea alone has never been the cause of success. It needs to be implemented. Now to do this we propose to get all chess players to speak as one voice here on African Chess Lounge. We want to get support of 10 000 chess fans, and as one voice do a petition to FIDE to formally put an organization of this nature in place.

We currently are around a fan group of 400-500 on Facebook. We want to push this to 10 000. We want to do this by 10 July so that we put it forward to FIDE! We have very capable people in Africa who can head this group and I believe this is a way forward. 

 What can I do?
 If this appeals to you, just visit 


and hit the like button! If you only did this we would be 1 more person closer to this goal and in your zone of control you will have done your part.

If you decide to expand in this activity and invite other people too, we would now place your actions to revolutionary activity and you will start walking in the direction of real change, because part of responsibility is getting others too, to do their part. Lets carry the torch and meet on the other side of the finishing line, 10 000 people on board. What do you say?

Regards
Reuben Salimu
Executive Director
African Chess Lounge

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