Earlier this year, an image of Domingas Togna, Guinea-Bissau’s most decorated track athlete, re-emerged. She was pictured breaking rocks in a quarry in Bissau’s outskirts to sell to construction workers to sustain her and her children. It was work that she had done before, as she shared in a 2014 interview, this was how she paid for her running shoes to continue training. In her 20-year career as an athlete, Togna represented Guinea-Bissau in competitions across the African continent, the Lusofonia Games in Macau in 2006, World Athletics Championship in Japan in 2007, and she even participated in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She had expressed, in the 2014 interview that she “did not deserve to be abandoned by the [Bissau-Guinean] state.” Similarly, the sprinter Holder da Silva, who has competed widely for Guinea-Bissau has had to put his passion for athletics aside to sustain his family. Cyclist Ivanildo Ié, another competitive athlete from the region, continues to work alongside his training in order to sustain himself.

Sports has been recognised by many international governing bodies, including the United Nations and the African Union, as playing a critical role in reaching development goals and promoting peace and stability. The African Union’s (AU) African Charter for African Cultural Renaissance, recognised the importance of culture in nation-building. Thus, sports are considered a “major contributor in human development and strengthening national cohesion and rapprochement of people.” As such, the AU, through its Sports Council, aims to “develop and promote sports” by advocating for funding and ensuring that sports policy and infrastructure are developed in its member states.

So, how do the most awarded track athletes in the country find themselves in a position as vulnerable as Togna and da Silva? In countries like Guinea-Bissau, funding, policy, and infrastructure for sports continue to be underdeveloped. Today, at 40, it’s clear that Togna would have wanted to guarantee her survival differently. Her biggest dream is to be able to share her knowledge by training younger athletes, particularly women, in the country so that they can have their own international sports careers. Da Silva has similar aspirations: to develop new talents in the country and empower athletics in the country. But while opportunities and resources continue to lack in the sector, the futures of Guinean athletes remain precarious. 

Though the attention rests primarily on football in the country, the lack of resources spreads to all the athletic disciplines.

Sports and National Consciousness

Sports organisations emerged in Guinea-Bissau under the colonial regime with the intent of building unity and identification with the Portuguese metropole in a time when there was growing pressure to end colonial domination. The only people that were allowed to participate in tournaments were those who had access to the only high school in the country in the capital, Bissau, or the sports clubs in the major cities— most of them Cape Verdeans or assimilated Bissau-Guineans. Most non-assimilated natives engaged only in improvised teams and games (of football) in their neighbourhoods and villages. 

With the national selection of Portuguese Guinea competing across the continent with other countries— many of which were already independent by this time —it became a marker of, not only the economic and social improvements of Portuguese Guinea but of Portuguese supremacy. The strength of Portuguese Guinea’s football selection was evidence that the so-called civilising mission was “successful.” 

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Sports later became a tool of mobilisation for Bissau-Guineans who sought independence. Amílcar Cabral, the renowned revolutionary and founder of The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), had attempted to establish a sports club that would be accessible to the native masses in 1954 as a strategy for political organisation and resistance through culture. He was not authorised to do so by colonial authorities. 

Players like Bobo Keita, who played for the national selection and who would eventually join the ranks of PAIGC, were inspired by the teams of countries like Ghana and Nigeria, citing contact with leaders like Kwame Nkrumah as pivotal in forming his political consciousness. According to his testimony in the book De Campo em Campo' by Norberto Tavares de Carvalho he said, “I began to reflect on our conditions in relation to other footballers that we crossed paths with during the international tournament in Lagos,” said Keita. “Most of the other teams seemed to have better support and better conditions than ours,” he offered in his testimony.

As independence movements gained traction, sports became an arena to challenge oppression and express desires for liberation. As they became independent, African athletes began participating increasingly in international competitions, and nations invested in building stadiums in the capitals—all considered markers of successful postcolonial nationalism and modernity. Guinea-Bissau established sports federations for football in 1974, and other athletics including basketball, and handball in 1988. But with the challenges that the country still faced, the results that had been intended by the post-independence governments to develop national sports could not fully be achieved.

Bissau-Guinean Sports in the 21st Century 

In late 2020, Bissau-Guinean sports clubs and federations complained that they lacked the support of political authorities, with the volleyball federation struggling to expand nationally, and even football federations— despite the popularity of the sport across the country –often struggling with the survival of many clubs. Chronic instability in the country, which frequently sees governments undone and redone, has not allowed for the continuity of development plans in any sector. Naturally, organised sports have suffered from this dysfunction as well. This is evidenced in the fact that between 2000 and 2012, the national football team only played 12 matches. 

Guinea-Bissau’s teams and athletes have struggled to qualify for several competitions, many because of poor training conditions and lack of equipment. The lack of funding also has consequences for the number and quality of trainers who are available. Trainers often end up going unpaid and athletes are also faced with having to pay their own way in order to attend international competitions. “I have always paid for my own trips and the pieces for my bicycle,” Ié shares. 

Unpaid debts have also contributed to Guinea-Bissau’s preclusion from competition. In 2008, the football team was not allowed to compete for the AFCON qualifiers for this reason. The deficiency of revenue in the sector makes it an unattractive option for younger athletes aspiring to compete both nationally and internationally. 

Hopes For the Future

Considering this discussion mostly centres men in sports, even less investment, then, is placed in women’s sports. Along with a wide pay gap, globally, women athletes remain underfunded. Female representation in sports in Guinea-Bissau from 1989 to 2000 was near insignificant. In the small West African country, increasing girls’ participation in sports even just for entertainment continues to be an uphill battle because it is often understood to be a male arena. The first FIFA recognised women’s football game was in 2006. Though the national women’s league is active, the national team has yet to participate in any international cups. 

Despite the challenges they face, athletes remain hopeful. Guinea-Bissau’s qualification for the AFCON in 2017 was an encouraging moment, and for the first time in 2015, the Olympic Committee of Guinea-Bissau adopted a strategic plan to develop the sector and support the principal stakeholders: athletes. In August 2020 it introduced another plan for the 2020-2028 period. 

Four Bissau-Guinean athletes are competing in the Tokyo Olympics this year; freestyle wrestlers Augusto Midana (a nine-time African champion) as well as Diamantino Fafé, the judoka, Taciana Lima Baldé, and short distance runner Seco Camará. Developing sports is not only pivotal to ensuring that they have the resources to train and sponsor international trips, it is also about protecting them and their livelihoods. This helps protect the aspirations of upcoming generations of athletes who dream of bearing the Bissau-Guinean flag in their respective sports. 

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Out of the sheer love of sport, athletes continue aiming for gold because it “brings pride and attention to our small country, and that can help us to nurture the many talents that we have here,” says cyclist Ié. In their last competition in Senegal in July 2021, the equipment they used was a donation from a Senegalese cyclist. His hope is that one day the state will help the seven best national cyclists with equipment and with the means to participate internationally so that Guinea-Bissau can have a cycling champion, alongside others like athlete Domingas Togna and wrestler Augusto Midana. 

With the representation of women like Togna, Taciana Baldé and Jéssica Inchude, who competed at the 2016 Rio Olympics, as well as coaches like Leopoldina Ross, there are hopes for a continual push for girls’ participation in Bissau-Guinean sports and substantial investment in their athletic development.