‘You want to be like Neymar?’: connections between football, schooling and the future in eastern Uganda

ABSTRACTLiterature on football in the Global South explains the popularity of the sport in relation to a devaluation of schooling. As schools no longer provide a route to successful adulthood in the neoliberal present, youth, ‘stuck’ in waithood, increasingly turn to football to find their way into the future. This article explores the relationships between football, schooling and the future in rural eastern Uganda and presents a different story. It argues that in eastern Uganda football and schooling reinforce each other’s popularity and their connection is harmonious rather than conflicting: football is used to perform a schooled identity; football is played to hold on to educational aspirations; and the sport provides schooled people with socio-political opportunities in the village. The article shows how youth out of school anticipate a future with more schooling through playing football.KEYWORDS: FootballschoolingeducationUgandawaithoodpace Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Ethical approvalEthical approval for this research was obtained from the International Development Research Ethics Committee of the University of East Anglia (no approval number provided).Notes1. Pseudonyms are used to refer to people and villages within Bunyafa in this paper.2. The educational system in Uganda knows 7 years of primary school, 4 years of lower secondary school (O-levels) and two years of upper secondary school (A-levels).3. Bunyafa subcounty was redefined as a consequence of Uganda’s decentralisation policy when I was doing fieldwork. In this paper I use the term Bunyafa to refer to the area it covered before the redefinition in 2020.4. Tromp and Datzberger (Citation2021) provide a good historical overview of how UPE came about in Uganda.5. My survey data shows that only 6% of the children of the respondents never went to school, 42% passes primary school and there is hardly any gender disparity in primary and secondary school enrolment.6. The survey included 246 people of different households spread out over 20 different villages in Bunyafa sub-county, selected through a multistage cluster sampling strategy. Information was collected about respondents, their children and siblings.7. An example of such an organisation in the Mbale region is the Child Restoration Outreach (CRO).8. Translations are in Lugisu, the language spoken in Bunyafa, also by football players.9. There are other activities, in addition to football, through which an educated identity is performed in rural Uganda, such as playing Ludo or participating in community organisation (see Jones Citation2020, Citationforthcoming).10. The beach, I later found out, appeared to be a small stream, a few miles away from the village and mainly surrounded by rocks. It did not resemble an actual beach, but the boys used the place like most people in the Global North make use of the beach – to swim, relax and enjoy free time.