Paper short abstract:

Sports furnish more present-day African heroes than politics. This paper zooms in on the role of sports heroes in the popular African imagination, showing how they are produced, and reflecting on the dependency of this process on the centers of power and sports excellence outside the continent.

Paper long abstract:

Africans have few heroes to identify with, and this paper has as its core the thesis that sports furnishes the most pertinent of all heroes for Africans, especially African youth. The time of the political heroes seems more or less over, the continent's present giants all seem to have clay feet, the media are a force in their own in bringing heroes down, so the prime type of hero now in Africa are the big time sportsmen. Africa's sports base is very narrow - just a few sports - so just a small number of sports serve as the repositories of popular heroes,mainly football players and athletes. Speaking from a personal experience in African sports administration, I will try to show how this type of hero is easily made, quite steadfast and through his or her extreme visibility very suited as the New African Hero. More than the political power figures, these icons embody most of the ideals of the present youth. It also shows, that this production of heroes or icons, is highly dependent on a globalised situation, in which what is important in Africa resonates with the exploits of their heroes in Europe. The globalisation of heroism seems to elad to a new dependency.