Project description
Sport and religion in young Africans’ integration
Across much of Africa, young people are caught in ‘waithood’. They are too old to be children but lack the financial means to enter into independent adulthood. Many turn to sport and/or religion to navigate this uncertain stage, but little is understood about how the two intersect. The ERC-funded MFA project aims to explore this sport-religion nexus, examining how athletic practices borrow from religious traditions and vice versa, shaping identity, meaning and purpose. Taking an Afrocentric, actor-oriented approach, the project shifts focus from Western frameworks to lived African experiences. Case studies range from boxing in Nigeria to karate in Egypt. By rethinking how sport and faith intertwine in Africa, MFA aims to deepen understanding, decolonise knowledge production and highlight Africa’s global cultural influence.
Objective
Many young African lives are paused in ‘waithood’ (Honwana 2012): no longer children but unable to become independent adults. Many manage this situation through sport, religion, or both. The question at the heart of MFA is how sport and religion in tandem provide a way out of ‘waithood’.
Sport and religion alternately reference each other as performance enhancers. Both have been posited as catalysts for development and integration, however, their interplay remains under-theorised. Social science views sport through a secular lens, while religious studies have been slow to recognise the ‘religious’ elements of sport. If they do, studies are limited to a Western, Christian context. MFA will span existing academic siloes by taking a multidisciplinary approach, considering the interplay between sport and religion from a non-Western, non-Christian perspective.
Africa is known as the ‘sporting continent’ and Africans as the ‘most religious people’, making it a unique setting to investigate i) the ‘sport-religion nexus’ – how each appropriates the other’s values and practices and how they affect each other; and ii) how this nexus enables meaning and purpose. MFA will 1) deepen understanding of the sport-religion nexus; 2) innovate an Afrocentric, actor-oriented approach focused on lived experience; 3) centre Africa’s global sporting prowess, redressing misconceptions of Africa as peripheral; and 4) assess the potential of the sport-religion nexus as a catalyst for youth development. This will be achieved through case studies that document sports appropriating elements from different religions (Christianity, Islam, and African Endogenous Religions): boxing in Nigeria; soccer in South Africa; karate in Egypt; long-distance running in Kenya.
MFA’s dissemination and open-access academic, creative, and policy outputs will contribute to decolonising knowledge production about Africa, fostering South-North collaborations, and enhancing capacity development in Africa.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
WC1H OXG London
United Kingdom
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