While all eyes are on the African Cup of Nations, fledgling Ghanaian football club Keta Sandlanders are using the internet to appeal to fans around the world to help them survive and thrive.
If there’s one way to demonstrate to the broader population the benefits of a co-operative business structure, it’s football.
Football is a unifying factor for villages in Africa, for cities in England and for nations around the globe.
Arguably the greatest football club of the present day, FC Barcelona, is a member-owned club.
And some of the newest football clubs in Africa are also finding success and a new way of operating through a member-owned structure. In this case the members are not always only local, they are often global and they are united through a common ground called the internet.
Paul Jones, a lawyer who spent four months in Ghana, West Africa when he graduated from university in 2004, got behind the creation of the Keta Sandlanders club in Ghana, followed by two other clubs, VOA Sandlanders in Liberia, and Mutundwe Sandlanders in Uganda. Sandlanders is also now in the midst of establishing a a member-owned club in co-operation with the Ligi Ndogo youth football league in Kenya.
“Initially it’s a local co-op, about members. They work with the local co-operative alliance to make sure they’re developing as a co-operative should,” Jones told the eDigest. “The international membership is on top of that. They’re associate members and they don’t have voting rights.”
International members can join any of the clubs by paying a $US10 joining fee. The joining fee goes back to the clubs to support their development. Anyone with access to the internet can sign up to be an associate member of any of these Sandlanders clubs.
Jones’ latest efforts in the area of co-operative football are tied in with the celebration of UN International Year of Co-operatives. He is one of the organisers of the 2012 Sandlanders Cup, due to take place in Ghana in July.
The plan for the three-day tournament is to have four European clubs join the tournament alongside the four African sides.
Jones says that FC United of Manchester in the United Kingdom has expressed an interest in playing in the tournament. (FC United was formed by a group of disillusioned Manchester United supporters and is having success in England’s Northern Premier League Premier Division.) Among the other member-owned clubs that Sandlanders is in discussion with to play in the tournament include Sporting Lisbon, Athletic Bilbao and a selection of clubs from the German Bundesliga.
There is evidence of some football club fans becoming disillusioned with their big business owners, foreign ownership and general movement away from the community spirit that was instilled in football clubs and their members. Fans owning their clubs and being able to vote on their management is a move back to the original set-up of football leagues and has proven to be a popular model.
The tournament is still seeking sponsorship and interested parties can contact Paul Jones at pjones@sandlanders.com. Those interested in becoming members of a Sandlanders club can do so at www.sandlanders.com.
