Photos of some of the footballs we collected throughout East and Southern Africa as part of the “Trading Footballs” component of the Africa Goal project. The Africa Goal team trades genuine industry-standard footballs in exchange for locally hand-crafted footballs. These balls – made out whatever materials are easily available, including discarded plastic bags, fabric, string, wool, banana leafs, natural rubber, to name but a few – are a symbol of African creativity, a passion for football and ingenuity in the face of adversity. The fact that many people cannot afford to buy a football does not stop anyone from enjoying, and finding a way to play, the ‘beautiful game’.
To date, the team have collected over 1000 unique hand-crafted footballs from ten different African countries – each with their own story. These footballs have been exhibited in galleries in the United States, Belgium, Israel, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Among other exhibits the home made footballs were exhibited at the 2010 Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) and the SADC Global Village Exhibition in Johannesburg, South Africa at the end of the 2010 World Cup. These exhibitions have helped to fund the purchase of more footballs, share the Africa Goal story more widely, as well as raise money for HIV and AIDS projects – using football as a tool and platform for good.
We look forward to more football trading this coming summer during the 2018 Campaign!
To find out more visit http://africagoal.com/footballs/
