March 27, 2025 • 16 mins
Some call it the sport of kings or the passport to the world, and in Nigeria Polo has become a business essential. In Lagos, government ministers and business leaders play side by side while the sport gets sponsorship from global giants such as Coco Cola.
Bloomberg reporter Tiwa Adebayo joins Jennifer Zabasajja to explain how Polo became such a part of corporate culture in Nigeria, and how much business is taking place on the polo field rather than in the board room
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Polo. It's known as the sport of kings, but in
Nigeria it's become the sport of business kings. The polo
field provides another forum for business giants to battle, and
even government ministers and global giants like Coca Cola are
getting in on the act.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
It's a sport where you can meet people. I think
it was the famous Prime Minister Winston Churchill that said
polo is a passport to the world.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
On today's podcast, we'll look at how playing polo has
become an essential part of doing business and whether victories
on the field are translating to higher profits.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
And this is money listening on in action, he goes
all the way, sixty, taughty, dirty, he does it.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm Jennifer's Ambasaja and this is the Next Africa Podcast,
bringing you one story each week from the continent driving
the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg
can provide. Joining me today is Bloomberg's reporter tiwa Adebayo,
who is also a polo player. We should note tiwa
thanks so much for joining us. Let's just get right
(01:19):
into it, talk about how polo became such a big
sport in Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Well, the thing to know about polo in Nigeria is
that it's actually almost as old as the country itself.
It was brought over by British military personnel. It was
first played by the Cavalry. The first match actually happened
in Lagos in nineteen oh four. But it's a very
big sport and it's played by a lot of individuals.
It's growing in Nigeria. There's around twenty seven different polo clubs.
(01:50):
There's thirty three different playing fields, from josh Badon to Lagos.
The Lagos Polo Club is definitely the eminent club, not
just in Nigeria but also in Africa as well. It's
where the highest handycap polo tournament in Africa's played. Highest
handicap meaning is where the best players, the highest ranked
(02:12):
players in the world play. The Lagos Polo Club itself
has around four hundred members. Now there's about seven hundred
and fifty active players in Nigeria as a whole. So
it may come as a surprise to people in the West,
perhaps in Europe, that polo is as big and people
are as passionate about it in Nigeria and across the
(02:34):
continent in Africa as well and Tia.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I should admit my knowledge of polo is very limited.
I know a bit about it. There was a special
on Netflix actually I think it was produced by Printeria
and the Duchess, but I don't know much about it.
What I do know is that it is quite expensive
though for people who do play it. Who is paying
(02:56):
for it in some of these clubs in Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well, to really get an understanding of who's paying for it,
you need to understand a bit about the rules of
polo and the culture surrounding the game. So just a
little crash course, on every team, there's four players and
one of those players is usually someone called the patron,
and that person is responsible for funding the team. They
pay the tournament entry. They usually own the horses that
(03:21):
you play with, or they rent the horses. Sometimes they'll
bring in a professional player as well, so they'll pay
those fees and they're essentially responsible for making sure it's
all paid for and it all goes through. So that's
how a lot of it is finance. But there's also
the corporate involvement as well, So in Nigeria specifically, there's
very large involvement by financial services companies, notably GT Bank
(03:45):
in Nigeria, the title sponsor of the Legos International Polo
Tournament this year. They've been sponsoring polo tournaments for around
eighteen years. You also have Chapel Hill Denim there's another
title sponsor. Companies and charities as well use so there's
a lot of different sources of funding that go into
the sport. But crucially, when I've been speaking to people,
(04:08):
what they're saying is that the sponsorship is growing and
it's also changing in shape. So it might have started
off as these companies financing polo tournaments as a way
to entertain their private wealth clients, for example, bringing people
to the polo it's usually a long day out and
you can have drinks at the bar in between the matches,
(04:29):
so it's a good way to entertain corporate clients. But
they've moved from doing this to actually sponsoring the tournaments
in a more traditional way that you might expect of
a football tournament for example, So having their logos up
around the polo field and having their branding crucially on
the live streams of these polo tournaments. That's another area
(04:50):
that the game is expanding into The Lagos International Polo
Tournament was streamed on YouTube this year and it has
been done for a couple of years. So the sport
is expanding, and what I've been told is that these
brands are really using it as a visibility platform and
they're trying to attach themselves to this label of premium
level entertainment and luxury, which is a very lucrative market,
(05:13):
especially for the financial services sector.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
How important is it then for these businesses? I mean
you mentioned how it's growing. Clearly they believe they have
a client tell that they could tap into. How is
it being seen as a business tool for some of
these companies.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Well, I did a bit of research into this to
find out kind of why they put their sponsorship and
really their name behind these tournaments and actually GT Bank
they've described the Lagos International Polo Tournament played at Lagos
Polo Club as a staple in Nigeria's sporting and social
calendar and they say they remain committed to driving positive
(05:51):
change with it and also the impact and fostering of
community of the sport. So it's clear they see a
lot of different avenues with which they can grow brand
and it's no surprise as well that the clientele that
play polo are very useful for them. So just in
the Lagos Polo Club alone, in its members it counts
the Finance Minister of Nigeria, lat Edgen for example, Cola
(06:14):
Kareem famously the CEO of Shoreline. I spoke to him
before this recording as well. He actually owns a polo
team called Showline Polo, so he described it as a
sort of natural extension of his company as it were,
He's a polo fanatic, one of the highest ranked players
that isn't professional in the country, so it's useful for
(06:36):
them to have access to these people. And the way
it's been described to me is that if one of
these companies were to set up a billboard, for example,
on the side of the road, maybe twenty percent of
the people that passed that billboard would be relevant the
target market that they're trying to reach. But with polo,
as the former president of Legos Polo Club Adele told me,
(06:56):
they can guarantee really that eighty percent of the clientele
will be the people that they're trying to speak to.
I spoke to the commercial director of the Africa Polo Network,
Mercedi Molasiwa and he told me just how lucrative the
sponsorship mark is a polo is.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
It's modest, but in quantums of millions of let's say
South African rands. Because these are private or they're not
really that public. I'm giving you an estimation in the
you know, anything ranging between three to five million rands
South African rands for Netbank. The point out I do
(07:32):
want to say is that what we have observed is
that once the corporate sponsor is on board, you do
see an increasing level of investment in the quality of
the tournament experience. With every passing year, the level of
investment in the tournament increases and it's visible.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And do you stick with us? When we come back,
we'll hear more about the songe power role that polo
is playing and how it can potentially spill off of
the field and into the boardroom.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Welcome back. Today. We're looking at the role polo is
playing amongst Nigeria's business elite. Tiwa Atabayo is still with me, Tia,
You've been speaking to some of Legos's polo playing community.
Talk more about what they were telling you.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Well, I had a really fascinating conversation with Cola Kareem,
who is the CEO of Shoreline Energy and also the
owner of Shoreline Polo. So I asked him basically, what
is the business case for Shoreline Polo. Shoreline and it's
one of the leading energy and infrastructure companies across Africa,
and he says to me that actually the Shoreline Polo
(08:47):
team as it were, has kind of always existed. So
he plays the sport, his sons play the sport. He
mentioned siblings that play it, so it wasn't a sort
of surprise to formalize that into a funded, fully funded
polo operation. He told me that there's this real association
between polo and excellence, and so it's no surprise that
(09:10):
he'd want to associate his brand with that. We also
spoke a bit about how Polo can act as a
bridge between Africa and perhaps countries in the West and
even in the Middle East in terms of business links.
Cola Kareem has recently been appointed as to the advisory
board of British American Tobacco and he said to me
(09:31):
that working with these companies outside of Africa, he's able
to use Polo as a point of reference and a
global platform, as he described it, to bounce off of.
So I think it's really interesting at how polo is
building links between different countries but also within Africa. I
was speaking to Adeleyier, who is the former president of
(09:54):
the Lagos Polo Club.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
It's a sport where you can meet people. I think
it was the famous Prime Minister Winston Churchill that said
polo is a passport to the world. The Nairobi and
Legos Club now have a yearly competition where we go
to Nairabia and play and they come to Legos and play,
and that alone has fostered social and economical benefits for
both sides. We also play the Heritage Cup at Guards
(10:17):
in England. The Heritage Cup is based on the Commonwealth
teams playing together playing in England, not already not only
Foster's Commonwealth relationship, but of course there'll be businesses there
as well.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
So it seems like it's a force that brings people together,
as many sports do. And the president of the Polo
Africa Polo Network said to me that they see the
sport growing into something akin to golf or Formula one
for example, a sport that is perhaps targeted at a
premium market, but with a very broad appeal as well.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned a game like golf, right.
You just take a look at some of the deals
that have reportedly been done on the golf course, some
of the present and then I want name names that
prefer to spend a lot of time on the golf
course and the business that has got done historically. Could
that now the role that we've seen golf play could
(11:11):
pull those step in and sort of fill that void
at least in Legos or in some parts of Africa.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Well, it does seem to be going that way one
because of the clientele, but crucially there is a networking
element as well, because it's not just the players that
make up the game of polo. To have a polo team,
you need an extensive team of grooms to look after
the horses. And those are often people who perhaps don't
come from those same circles of world leaders and CEOs,
(11:40):
but they have a love for horses that is shared
between them. For example, Cola Kareem's Shoreline polo team this
year have actually been playing with a groom. So that
groom the talent was recognized and he was moved up
into the team, and I've been speaking to various players
throughout the scene who have said to me that they've
seen grooms sponsored to complete their master's studies, for example,
(12:03):
and then go on to work in financial institutions with
their patron and it can definitely change one's life. They
can enter into an industry which they may not have
been exposed to, and it does remind me of the
game of golf. Actually, you hear often about people that
were caddies in golf and got speaking to business leaders
or portfolio managers and were offered internships. So it seems
(12:27):
like there is that same spirit of networking and entrepreneurship
that goes on in polo as well as in golf,
and it's growing in popularity, especially in Nigeria.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Which is why it would make sense for big global
giants like Coca Cola and others to get in on this.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Right absolutely, Coca Cola has a polo team that plays
in Nigeria that bears the Coca Cola branding. Then you
have teams like MSD Baby Bear that is owned by
the Dan Goto's Cola. Kareem tells me that there is
a fierce rivalry between a Shoreline Polo Team and Steve
Babybaar obviously two big magnates of the energy sector within Africa.
(13:05):
That rivalry definitely spills onto the polo field as well,
and he spoke to me about the real desire to
win because you're playing with the company's name emblazoned across you.
But something else that's really compelling I think about polo
is Cola Karine put it to me and said, there's
only two things that stop people from playing polo. It's
(13:25):
fear and the second one is death. So it's a
very dangerous sport. But I'm told that that camaraderie that
you build because you have to trust your teammates to
such an extent, makes it easier to have dealings in
the business world because these are people that you really
get to know on a quite an intimate basis and
in a very high pressure, intense and often stressful game.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I mean, those are two very legitimate reasons to not
play this absolutely just saying how competitive are we getting here?
Speaker 4 (13:57):
It's definitely something that a lot of resources are being
being poured into. There is talk about building polo fields
in Issamine, just outside Legos, which is going to be
a very big tourist area as well. That development's going
on there, but they want to as well as growing
the tourist attractions, they also want to grow the game
of polo alongside that, because it's clear that there's appetite
(14:20):
for it to watch the game, to be involved in it,
not just people that play it, people that are passionate
about horses and passionate about watching too. So you're definitely
seeing a very competitive level of the sport. But that
is the thing about polo. It's one of the very
few sports that you can't pretend to play because at
the end of the day you have to get on
a horse and go at about thirty miles an hour
(14:40):
and also hit a ball at the same time. And
I can tell you from experience it's definitely not easy
and it's not always the safest, shall we say.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
And thanks again to Bloomberg's tiwa Adebayo for that reporting.
And here's a few other stories we've been following across
the region. This week, Sudan's army recaptured the national capital
from the Rapid Support Forces militia, a turning point in
a two year civil war that's drawn in outside powers
(15:10):
and torn the resource rich North African country apart. The
advance is a major blow for the RSF, which had
seized control of swaths of Khartoum and the rest of
the nation after the eruption in April twenty twenty three
of a conflict that may have killed as many as
one hundred and fifty thousand people. And South Africa, with
(15:32):
the help of the World Bank, has a three billion
dollar plan to reverse the decline in services and infrastructure
in eight of its biggest cities. It will use a
one billion dollar loan from the World Bank coupled with
two billion of government money to finance grants for cities
including Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town that meet targets in
(15:52):
providing water, sanitation, electricity, and solid waste processing under a
new government program. And you can follow these stories across Bloomberg,
including the Next African Newsletter. We'll put a link to
that in the show notes. This program was produced by
Adrian Bradley. Don't forget to follow and review the show
(16:13):
wherever you usually get your podcasts. I'm Jennifer Zabasanja. Thanks
as always for listening.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Polo. It's known as the sport of kings, but in
Nigeria it's become the sport of business kings. The polo
field provides another forum for business giants to battle, and
even government ministers and global giants like Coca Cola are
getting in on the act.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
It's a sport where you can meet people. I think
it was the famous Prime Minister Winston Churchill that said
polo is a passport to the world.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
On today's podcast, we'll look at how playing polo has
become an essential part of doing business and whether victories
on the field are translating to higher profits.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
And this is money listening on in action, he goes
all the way, sixty, taughty, dirty, he does it.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm Jennifer's Ambasaja and this is the Next Africa Podcast,
bringing you one story each week from the continent driving
the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg
can provide. Joining me today is Bloomberg's reporter tiwa Adebayo,
who is also a polo player. We should note tiwa
thanks so much for joining us. Let's just get right
(01:19):
into it, talk about how polo became such a big
sport in Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Well, the thing to know about polo in Nigeria is
that it's actually almost as old as the country itself.
It was brought over by British military personnel. It was
first played by the Cavalry. The first match actually happened
in Lagos in nineteen oh four. But it's a very
big sport and it's played by a lot of individuals.
It's growing in Nigeria. There's around twenty seven different polo clubs.
(01:50):
There's thirty three different playing fields, from josh Badon to Lagos.
The Lagos Polo Club is definitely the eminent club, not
just in Nigeria but also in Africa as well. It's
where the highest handycap polo tournament in Africa's played. Highest
handicap meaning is where the best players, the highest ranked
(02:12):
players in the world play. The Lagos Polo Club itself
has around four hundred members. Now there's about seven hundred
and fifty active players in Nigeria as a whole. So
it may come as a surprise to people in the West,
perhaps in Europe, that polo is as big and people
are as passionate about it in Nigeria and across the
(02:34):
continent in Africa as well and Tia.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I should admit my knowledge of polo is very limited.
I know a bit about it. There was a special
on Netflix actually I think it was produced by Printeria
and the Duchess, but I don't know much about it.
What I do know is that it is quite expensive
though for people who do play it. Who is paying
(02:56):
for it in some of these clubs in Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well, to really get an understanding of who's paying for it,
you need to understand a bit about the rules of
polo and the culture surrounding the game. So just a
little crash course, on every team, there's four players and
one of those players is usually someone called the patron,
and that person is responsible for funding the team. They
pay the tournament entry. They usually own the horses that
(03:21):
you play with, or they rent the horses. Sometimes they'll
bring in a professional player as well, so they'll pay
those fees and they're essentially responsible for making sure it's
all paid for and it all goes through. So that's
how a lot of it is finance. But there's also
the corporate involvement as well, So in Nigeria specifically, there's
very large involvement by financial services companies, notably GT Bank
(03:45):
in Nigeria, the title sponsor of the Legos International Polo
Tournament this year. They've been sponsoring polo tournaments for around
eighteen years. You also have Chapel Hill Denim there's another
title sponsor. Companies and charities as well use so there's
a lot of different sources of funding that go into
the sport. But crucially, when I've been speaking to people,
(04:08):
what they're saying is that the sponsorship is growing and
it's also changing in shape. So it might have started
off as these companies financing polo tournaments as a way
to entertain their private wealth clients, for example, bringing people
to the polo it's usually a long day out and
you can have drinks at the bar in between the matches,
(04:29):
so it's a good way to entertain corporate clients. But
they've moved from doing this to actually sponsoring the tournaments
in a more traditional way that you might expect of
a football tournament for example, So having their logos up
around the polo field and having their branding crucially on
the live streams of these polo tournaments. That's another area
(04:50):
that the game is expanding into The Lagos International Polo
Tournament was streamed on YouTube this year and it has
been done for a couple of years. So the sport
is expanding, and what I've been told is that these
brands are really using it as a visibility platform and
they're trying to attach themselves to this label of premium
level entertainment and luxury, which is a very lucrative market,
(05:13):
especially for the financial services sector.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
How important is it then for these businesses? I mean
you mentioned how it's growing. Clearly they believe they have
a client tell that they could tap into. How is
it being seen as a business tool for some of
these companies.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Well, I did a bit of research into this to
find out kind of why they put their sponsorship and
really their name behind these tournaments and actually GT Bank
they've described the Lagos International Polo Tournament played at Lagos
Polo Club as a staple in Nigeria's sporting and social
calendar and they say they remain committed to driving positive
(05:51):
change with it and also the impact and fostering of
community of the sport. So it's clear they see a
lot of different avenues with which they can grow brand
and it's no surprise as well that the clientele that
play polo are very useful for them. So just in
the Lagos Polo Club alone, in its members it counts
the Finance Minister of Nigeria, lat Edgen for example, Cola
(06:14):
Kareem famously the CEO of Shoreline. I spoke to him
before this recording as well. He actually owns a polo
team called Showline Polo, so he described it as a
sort of natural extension of his company as it were,
He's a polo fanatic, one of the highest ranked players
that isn't professional in the country, so it's useful for
(06:36):
them to have access to these people. And the way
it's been described to me is that if one of
these companies were to set up a billboard, for example,
on the side of the road, maybe twenty percent of
the people that passed that billboard would be relevant the
target market that they're trying to reach. But with polo,
as the former president of Legos Polo Club Adele told me,
(06:56):
they can guarantee really that eighty percent of the clientele
will be the people that they're trying to speak to.
I spoke to the commercial director of the Africa Polo Network,
Mercedi Molasiwa and he told me just how lucrative the
sponsorship mark is a polo is.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
It's modest, but in quantums of millions of let's say
South African rands. Because these are private or they're not
really that public. I'm giving you an estimation in the
you know, anything ranging between three to five million rands
South African rands for Netbank. The point out I do
(07:32):
want to say is that what we have observed is
that once the corporate sponsor is on board, you do
see an increasing level of investment in the quality of
the tournament experience. With every passing year, the level of
investment in the tournament increases and it's visible.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And do you stick with us? When we come back,
we'll hear more about the songe power role that polo
is playing and how it can potentially spill off of
the field and into the boardroom.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Welcome back. Today. We're looking at the role polo is
playing amongst Nigeria's business elite. Tiwa Atabayo is still with me, Tia,
You've been speaking to some of Legos's polo playing community.
Talk more about what they were telling you.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Well, I had a really fascinating conversation with Cola Kareem,
who is the CEO of Shoreline Energy and also the
owner of Shoreline Polo. So I asked him basically, what
is the business case for Shoreline Polo. Shoreline and it's
one of the leading energy and infrastructure companies across Africa,
and he says to me that actually the Shoreline Polo
(08:47):
team as it were, has kind of always existed. So
he plays the sport, his sons play the sport. He
mentioned siblings that play it, so it wasn't a sort
of surprise to formalize that into a funded, fully funded
polo operation. He told me that there's this real association
between polo and excellence, and so it's no surprise that
(09:10):
he'd want to associate his brand with that. We also
spoke a bit about how Polo can act as a
bridge between Africa and perhaps countries in the West and
even in the Middle East in terms of business links.
Cola Kareem has recently been appointed as to the advisory
board of British American Tobacco and he said to me
(09:31):
that working with these companies outside of Africa, he's able
to use Polo as a point of reference and a
global platform, as he described it, to bounce off of.
So I think it's really interesting at how polo is
building links between different countries but also within Africa. I
was speaking to Adeleyier, who is the former president of
(09:54):
the Lagos Polo Club.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
It's a sport where you can meet people. I think
it was the famous Prime Minister Winston Churchill that said
polo is a passport to the world. The Nairobi and
Legos Club now have a yearly competition where we go
to Nairabia and play and they come to Legos and play,
and that alone has fostered social and economical benefits for
both sides. We also play the Heritage Cup at Guards
(10:17):
in England. The Heritage Cup is based on the Commonwealth
teams playing together playing in England, not already not only
Foster's Commonwealth relationship, but of course there'll be businesses there
as well.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
So it seems like it's a force that brings people together,
as many sports do. And the president of the Polo
Africa Polo Network said to me that they see the
sport growing into something akin to golf or Formula one
for example, a sport that is perhaps targeted at a
premium market, but with a very broad appeal as well.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned a game like golf, right.
You just take a look at some of the deals
that have reportedly been done on the golf course, some
of the present and then I want name names that
prefer to spend a lot of time on the golf
course and the business that has got done historically. Could
that now the role that we've seen golf play could
(11:11):
pull those step in and sort of fill that void
at least in Legos or in some parts of Africa.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Well, it does seem to be going that way one
because of the clientele, but crucially there is a networking
element as well, because it's not just the players that
make up the game of polo. To have a polo team,
you need an extensive team of grooms to look after
the horses. And those are often people who perhaps don't
come from those same circles of world leaders and CEOs,
(11:40):
but they have a love for horses that is shared
between them. For example, Cola Kareem's Shoreline polo team this
year have actually been playing with a groom. So that
groom the talent was recognized and he was moved up
into the team, and I've been speaking to various players
throughout the scene who have said to me that they've
seen grooms sponsored to complete their master's studies, for example,
(12:03):
and then go on to work in financial institutions with
their patron and it can definitely change one's life. They
can enter into an industry which they may not have
been exposed to, and it does remind me of the
game of golf. Actually, you hear often about people that
were caddies in golf and got speaking to business leaders
or portfolio managers and were offered internships. So it seems
(12:27):
like there is that same spirit of networking and entrepreneurship
that goes on in polo as well as in golf,
and it's growing in popularity, especially in Nigeria.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Which is why it would make sense for big global
giants like Coca Cola and others to get in on this.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Right absolutely, Coca Cola has a polo team that plays
in Nigeria that bears the Coca Cola branding. Then you
have teams like MSD Baby Bear that is owned by
the Dan Goto's Cola. Kareem tells me that there is
a fierce rivalry between a Shoreline Polo Team and Steve
Babybaar obviously two big magnates of the energy sector within Africa.
(13:05):
That rivalry definitely spills onto the polo field as well,
and he spoke to me about the real desire to
win because you're playing with the company's name emblazoned across you.
But something else that's really compelling I think about polo
is Cola Karine put it to me and said, there's
only two things that stop people from playing polo. It's
(13:25):
fear and the second one is death. So it's a
very dangerous sport. But I'm told that that camaraderie that
you build because you have to trust your teammates to
such an extent, makes it easier to have dealings in
the business world because these are people that you really
get to know on a quite an intimate basis and
in a very high pressure, intense and often stressful game.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I mean, those are two very legitimate reasons to not
play this absolutely just saying how competitive are we getting here?
Speaker 4 (13:57):
It's definitely something that a lot of resources are being
being poured into. There is talk about building polo fields
in Issamine, just outside Legos, which is going to be
a very big tourist area as well. That development's going
on there, but they want to as well as growing
the tourist attractions, they also want to grow the game
of polo alongside that, because it's clear that there's appetite
(14:20):
for it to watch the game, to be involved in it,
not just people that play it, people that are passionate
about horses and passionate about watching too. So you're definitely
seeing a very competitive level of the sport. But that
is the thing about polo. It's one of the very
few sports that you can't pretend to play because at
the end of the day you have to get on
a horse and go at about thirty miles an hour
(14:40):
and also hit a ball at the same time. And
I can tell you from experience it's definitely not easy
and it's not always the safest, shall we say.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
And thanks again to Bloomberg's tiwa Adebayo for that reporting.
And here's a few other stories we've been following across
the region. This week, Sudan's army recaptured the national capital
from the Rapid Support Forces militia, a turning point in
a two year civil war that's drawn in outside powers
(15:10):
and torn the resource rich North African country apart. The
advance is a major blow for the RSF, which had
seized control of swaths of Khartoum and the rest of
the nation after the eruption in April twenty twenty three
of a conflict that may have killed as many as
one hundred and fifty thousand people. And South Africa, with
(15:32):
the help of the World Bank, has a three billion
dollar plan to reverse the decline in services and infrastructure
in eight of its biggest cities. It will use a
one billion dollar loan from the World Bank coupled with
two billion of government money to finance grants for cities
including Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town that meet targets in
(15:52):
providing water, sanitation, electricity, and solid waste processing under a
new government program. And you can follow these stories across Bloomberg,
including the Next African Newsletter. We'll put a link to
that in the show notes. This program was produced by
Adrian Bradley. Don't forget to follow and review the show
(16:13):
wherever you usually get your podcasts. I'm Jennifer Zabasanja. Thanks
as always for listening.
Host
Jennifer Zabasajja
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