Learning through South–South development: Cuban-African partnerships in sport and physical education

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, Cuba has offered scholarships to students from low-resource countries to attend the Escuela Internacional de Educación Física y Deporte (EIEFD) for a six-year degree in sport, physical education, and coaching. Drawing on the experiences of EIEFD graduates from four Southern African countries (Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, and Lesotho) the authors discuss the meanings that this South–South cooperation through education holds for international students and for the self-sufficiency of sport and physical-education systems within partner countries. The authors also show that upon returning home, many EIEFD graduates are left to negotiate insular job markets and inconsistent domestic commitments to public sport and physical education. The implications for South–South development through international education, and the place of sport and physical education therein, are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport
• physical education
• international education
• South–South development
• Cuba
• Africa

Notes

1. Article 37 of ‘Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ reads:

Sport is also an important enabler of sustainable development. We recognize the growing contribution of sport to the realization of development and peace in its promotion of tolerance and respect and the contributions it makes to the empowerment of women and of young people, individuals and communities as well as to health, education and social inclusion objectives.

2. The Non-Aligned Movement was formed in 1961 by countries rejecting alignment with any major political bloc, particularly within the context of the Cold War. The Group of 77 was formed in 1964 at the UN Conference on Trade and Development to support the collective economic and development efforts of Southern polities.

3. EIEFD grads are not necessarily trained in sport-for-development, whereby sport is meant to contribute to meeting development goals like health, education, or conflict resolution and are just as likely to work in elite sport development as they are in community programs more typical of SDP. Still, since the beginning of the revolution, Cuba’s leaders have positioned the social and individual benefits of sport in ways that align with policies and practices now seen in the SDP sector (Huish 2011).

4. Sport organizations are also involved in this process. In Lesotho, we were told that the national Ministry of Sport selects students for the program and forwards them on to Cuba for approval.

5. Pseudonyms were assigned to EIEFD graduates in order to protect their identities.

6. At the time we visited, the University of Zambia offered training in physical education for those wishing to teach the subject, but did not have a broad sport curriculum similar to EIEFD. Further, the University did not offer a Master’s program in sport or physical education, which precluded the development of future university lecturers in the subject.

7. She also told us that there are four other EIEFD graduates doing similar work to her in Mozambique.

8. Of course, Cuba and INDER also pursue the development of elite athletes, but this is a part of a holistic, national approach that positions sport and physical education as both a social good and a human right.