NAIROBI (AFP) – It is eight in the evening and amateur teams of youngsters drawn from one of Nairobi’s toughest slums are locked in a five-a-side soccer match.
Normally they would have gone home long before dark to avoid the unsafe night-time streets of Mathare. But that was before the stadium became the first in Kenya to get solar-powered floodlighting, an incentive to stay on.
“We have already begun to see the changes. There is a big turn-out of teams who want to use the pitch for training in the evenings,” said Stephen Muchoki, manager of the Mathare Football for Hope Centre.
The development is a direct legacy of the first football World Cup in Africa held in South Africa last year: governing body FIFA afterwards chose 20 African groups to house a Football for Hope Centre to promote the sport, as well as health and education.
One was the Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) to which the new solar lighting system was donated by China’s Yingli Green Energy Holding Company, quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.
On top of the extra four hours of light a night provided by the new system, football players welcome the chance to practise away from the glare
Read More from the Article Source: Full Article
