Corporate Kenya not doing enough to support sports

Harambee Stars' Ryan Ogam celebrates his goal against Madagascar in the CHAN 2024 quarter-final match at The Moi International Sports Center. [Jonah Onyango, Standard. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

Kenya is about to host the biggest sporting decade in a generation, and somebody forgot to tell the boardrooms.

Afcon 2027 lands on home soil under the Pamoja Bid with Uganda and Tanzania. The WRC Safari Rally has run its final state-funded edition. Harambee Starlets are back at the Women's Africa Cup of Nations after a nine-year absence, so long that some of their original fans are now teenagers in high school.

National sevens rugby team Shujaa keeps flying the flag on the World Sevens Series. Our marathoners continue their polite annual mugging of foreign cities, from Berlin to Boston, Tokyo to New York. This should be a moment of national swagger. 

Yet scratch beneath the glossy press releases, and an uncomfortable truth wanders in, asking for a seat. Corporate Kenya is still, by and large, a spectator in a stadium it was supposed to help build. Worse, it is the kind of spectator who arrives at half time, eats the samosas, takes a selfie with the trophy, and leaves before the cleanup. 

President William Ruto's announcement that 2026 marks the end of public money for the Safari Rally was dressed up as fiscal discipline. Let us be honest. It was a dare. The state spent Sh2.1 billion in 2023, then Sh1.3 billion, then Sh980 million. The President essentially asked the private sector the question every Kenyan parent eventually asks a grown child still living at home. If you love this thing so much, why am I still paying for it? 

Kenya Breweries answered with a Sh45 million White Cap deal. KCB, Safaricom, Kenya Airways and SportPesa have lined up behind various tiers, all of which are welcome contributions. But let us not pretend a Sh45 million pouring-rights cheque substitutes for a Sh1 billion hosting budget. The arithmetic is brutal, and the silence from the rest of corporate Kenya's top tier is louder than the rally engines roaring through Hell's Gate. 

The pattern repeats across codes with almost comic consistency. The Kenya Cup, our flagship rugby league, is celebrating its 55th anniversary without a title sponsor. 55 years. That is older than most CEOs currently ducking the calls. Officials trot out the same tired excuses. Hard economic times. Governance concerns. The product needs work. All true. Also, a convenient cover for blue-chip boardrooms that keep the chequebook locked somewhere between the petty cash and the dusty CSR policy, while their social media teams cheerfully tweet "Go Shujaa" every Saturday. 

In athletics, the very discipline that built Brand Kenya into a global property, local sponsorship typically arrives only after a runner has already conquered the world. Nike, Adidas and Asics quietly underwrite our champions in their lean years, when they are surviving on ugali, hope and a borrowed pair of spikes. Our own banks, telcos and supermarkets wait patiently for the Olympic medal, then sprint to the airport with a banner. 

The standard corporate defence is the sacred mantra of "return on investment." It is a lazy argument dressed in spreadsheet clothing. Safaricom's near Sh1 billion investment in athletics over a decade did not flow because someone modelled it on PowerPoint. It flowed because leadership understood that brand equity in this country is built on goosebumps, not click-through rates.

Yes, governance is a legitimate worry. KRU has bled credibility. FKF carries scars. Some federations are about as transparent as a matatu windscreen at rush hour. But corporate Kenya has the lawyers, auditors and leverage to demand ring-fenced accounts, escrow arrangements and binding performance milestones. If our top firms can structure a syndicated loan for a shopping mall in 48 hours, they can structure a clean sponsorship for a national team in a week. 

Afcon 2027 will not wait for boardrooms to locate their courage between the quarterly earnings call and the annual golf day. 

If our biggest companies cannot rise to a home Afcon, a privatised Safari Rally and a starving Kenya Cup, then the next time they invoke patriotism in a glossy commercial, the rest of us are entitled to laugh, change the channel, and remember exactly who showed up when it mattered.

Koome Kazungu is a strategic communications expert