AfricaIs aCountry

Boss Player

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Boss Player

By
Sean Henry Jacobs

The Newscaster Komla Dumor loved sports, basketball (he had skills), and, above all, the beautiful game. He especially loved his Ghana's Black Stars.

Ghana v England in a friendly match at Wembley Stadium in London, 2011. Image credit Akira Suemori for FIA Foundation via Flickr (CC).

The BBC news presenter Komla Dumor, who passed away this weekend from cardiac arrest, was an exceptional broadcaster; read Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie’s obit here. Everyone loved him. He was probably the most stylish newscaster, and he was well on his way to becoming the first globally recognized superstar news presenter originating from the continent. Dumor took journalism seriously. Just watch his last big interview where he took on Rwanda’s Ambassador to the UK about that country’s habit of murdering opposition figures.

Dumor, known as the Boss Player, also loved sports, especially basketball (he had skills), and, above all, the beautiful game. He especially loved his Ghana Black Stars.

For example, during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, he ripped his shirt open in Superman style to reveal his true identity.

Or last November, when he celebrated Ghana’s qualification for Brazil 2014 by donning a lekarapa. And he seemed genuinely happy—like a fan—around footballers, like when he met Victor Moses (Liverpool and Nigeria) or thanked Sulley Muntari (AC Milan and Ghana) for gifting a signed shirt for his (Komla’s) son.

But it’s this video, in which Peter Okwoche, the BBC Focus on Africa sports presenter, challenges Komla to a game of keepie-uppie—that’s my favorite memory of the Boss Player.

 

Further Reading

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After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.