Nairobi: The Sports Career Fair and Symposium officially kicked off today at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), aiming to bring together all sports stakeholders to build connections and showcase the diverse career opportunities in sports. Convened by the Kenya Academy of Sports (KAS), the three-day inaugural event offers youth real pathways, while urging parents and federations to champion talent and empower dreams.
According to Kenya News Agency, the Symposium is key in highlighting the opportunities available in the sports ecosystem. Currently, sports is emerging as one of the main frontiers for job creation, wealth generation, and community transformation and empowerment in Kenya. The Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports, Mr. Salim Mvurya, described the event as the first of its kind, noting it will serve to enlighten the youth on how to invest in and actively participate in one of Kenya's fastest-growing frontiers for job creation, wealth generation, and community transformation.
The CS mentioned that the Forum seeks to expose young sports professionals, federations, academic institutions, coaches, sports journalists, stadia managers, and other key actors within the sports ecosystem to the vast opportunities that exist for skills development, professional growth, and livelihood empowerment. In his speech read on his behalf by the Principal Secretary (PS), State Department for Sports, Mr. Elijah Mwangi, during a media engagement in Nairobi, the CS said the Fair is a deliberate and strategic Government initiative aligning with the government's Bottom-Up Transformative Agenda (BETA), aimed at creating progressive pathways for young people in the sports sector.
Mr. Mvurya emphasized the fair's goal of showing young people the vast opportunities within the sporting industry, including careers in coaching, sports medicine, physiotherapy, biomechanics, performance tracking and analytics, sports journalism, law, marketing, content creation, and more. He highlighted Kenya's global renown as a sporting powerhouse and stressed the importance of not remaining on the sidelines of this transformation. It is also crucial in bringing together stakeholders, including federations, academic institutions, private sector partners, and global industry players.
The CS appealed to each stakeholder, emphasizing the essential support required for realizing this dream. The government is strengthening the talent development pipeline by integrating sports with education and entrepreneurship, ensuring that talent is identified early, nurtured properly, and supported holistically.
KAS CEO Dr. Doreen Odhiambo emphasized using sports opportunities as a springboard for careers and professions, highlighting KAS's commitment to creating platforms that position sports as a viable career path for youth. She noted the sector's multitude of opportunities in areas such as coaching, sports law, professionals' management, sports nutrition, media rights, stadium management, and more.
KAS Chairperson of Council, Mr. Thuo Chege, lauded the Academy's transformative approach to expanding the sports ecosystem, targeting unlocking the massive potential in the sporting sector. He stated that through the Career Fair, they aim to usher in a new era from medals to market, passion to platform-showcasing the vast opportunities in the sports sector in a move to reimagine sports as a career, a business, a craft, and most importantly, a pathway to empowerment of communities, counties, and the country as a whole.