IOC Shines a Bright Light on Olympafrica Center

For more than 10 years, Monsieur Mamadou Mansour Sambe has been in charge at the Olympafrica Center in this tiny fishing village. He is a proud man.

In a small building a few steps inside the front gate, boys and girls are chanting a wedding song often heard at marriages of the Lebu people, who have long lived near the Atlantic shores of this West African nation. A ferocious tom-tom beat sets the rhythm. The kids’ voices are strong.

Outside the doors, still inside the center walls, hundreds more youngsters are playing one sport or another. A group of sweaty girls is playing an intense game of team handball. Boys are playing pickup basketball and soccer games when, all of a sudden, just in front of the sign reminding these African children and teens about the dangers of AIDS, a series of 60-meter sprints breaks out. The dirt kicks up high as the kids--first the girls, then the boys--sprint down the hardscrabble field. Almost all of them are barefoot; a few chug along in flip-flops.

“You know,” the 41-year-old Sambe says, his eyes sweeping the grounds, taking in all the activity, “there are no registered AIDS cases in this village.”

If, as the senior leaders of the International Olympic Committee relentlessly remind skeptics, the purpose of the Olympic movement is not merely to put on the Games but to promote peace and fair play, to educate kids and to improve the world we live in, this place--and the Olympafrica program, which promotes the construction of similar centers across the continent--is a concrete example of turning words into action.

The program also provides a vivid illustration of the way the IOC has traditionally worked and still moves, with its emphasis on personal influence and access in high places--and of how it is trying to reinvent itself, in the wake of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, into an organization that provides institutional checks and balances and that makes its financial records available for outside review.

Olympafrica began as the pet project of one of the sons of Africa’s most influential IOC members. In recent months, its structure has been reorganized with a view toward broadening management and attracting critical overseas investment. Its financial ledgers are available for the asking. They reveal scrupulous accounting--which can’t always be said for other well-intended ventures in Africa.

“This operation is a great success,” IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said, explaining that he means not just the centers on the ground, but its relatively rapid evolution toward what the IOC calls “transparency,” meaning openness.

The idea for the Olympafrica foundation came from Ibrahima Mbaye, a Senegalese architect. He is the son of Keba Mbaye, who once was a judge on the World Court in The Hague and is a longtime IOC member. The senior Mbaye has long been one of Samaranch’s confidantes.

La Somone, a village of perhaps 3,000 people, is but a dot on the map, maybe 50 miles from the Senegalese capital of Dakar. To get there takes two hours on potholed roads that cut through plains dotted with one of Africa’s most recognizable symbols, the gnarled and spiky baobab tree.

The junior Mbaye has been coming to La Somone since he was a youngster. In the mid-1980s, seeking a way to promote development in even the furthest reaches of rural Africa, he sought--and got--an audience with Samaranch, pitching the IOC president with his idea of building a community center that would promote sports, education and local culture.

The IOC provided $25,000 in seed money. Local backers were persuaded to pitch in. UNESCO contributed. Total cost, according to the IOC: $64,730. The first Olympafrica center--named in Samaranch’s honor--opened in 1990 in La Somone.

The facility is not fancy. It takes up what would be three, maybe four, blocks in most cities in the United States. The grounds are walled. Inside is a simple houselike building with enough space to serve as classroom or dance floor. The rest is playing fields, all dirt. A few trees, planted in the early 1990s, spread a bit of shade around the walls.

Local workers built the La Somone facility--a model for the other centers. Locals run it.

On weekday afternoons, the kids pile in. They play. But they also learn. About community and personal health. About a world beyond La Somone--where the Olympic Games are held in exotic locales such as Sydney and Atlanta. And about the traditions unique to their corner of the globe.

“Before this center existed, we only played [soccer],” said Omar Boye, 19, who essentially grew up in it. Speaking in French, he said, “Now even small kids are doing theater.”

The dominant lesson inside the walls is respect--of one’s self and of others’ differences. Senegal, a nation of about 9 million people, is predominantly Muslim. On the team handball court, one team features a girl whirling around in a white tank-top and shorts; on the other team is a player wrapped from head to toe in a green sweatsuit, her head covered in a gray scarf that flaps around behind her when she runs.

“There are no religious problems in here,” Sambe says, also speaking in French. “Everybody moves together.”

In English, the junior Mbaye says: “When you have all these kids here, you can work on them. Give them good habits. Give them some discipline. It’s not easy. It’s work. But with these kids, you can do things.”

On weekend evenings, the center is rented out for dances or weddings. Financially, it is self-sufficient, Mbaye says, generating a little more than $6,000 annually.

The La Somone project suggested that the younger Mbaye’s idea could have wider merit. A foundation was created. Plans for 15 centers across Africa were developed. But where and how to get more money? What cost $64,730 in 1990 cost perhaps three times that later in the 1990s because of currency devaluations and price increases across Africa, officials said.

In a report prepared last year, the IOC said it had contributed more than $800,000 over the years to Olympafrica.

From 1993 to 1998, the foundation’s administrative council was chaired by Kim Un Yong of South Korea, one of the most influential members of the IOC. He provided records to The Times showing that he donated more than $100,000 to the foundation.

The automobile concern now known as DaimlerChrysler, a longtime IOC sponsor, emerged as a major financial backer. Thomas Bach of Germany, now an IOC vice president, serves as the company’s liaison to the IOC. A couple of years ago, the company announced it would contribute $500,000 to help complete construction on some of the 15 centers.

Other funding came from Cooperation Francaise, a French government aid program, and indirectly from the World Bank, according to IOC records.

All 15 centers are now open; two need more construction work and three are not yet formally inaugurated. One, in Mozambique, had to be partially rebuilt after torrential rains last year.

Over the past several months, meantime, two things happened. The Salt Lake scandal prompted the IOC to pledge that all its financial accounts would be audited and transparent. And, with the completion of the first 15 centers, the Olympafrica foundation laid plans to build 14 more. Projected cost: $3 million over four years, from 2001 through 2004.

Running costs for the foundation itself are budgeted for 2001 at about $77,000. Most of that is in salaries--about $30,000, divided among five employees--and the cost of renting and running an office in Dakar, a bit more than $20,000 annually. The rest is divided among charges such as translation expenses ($1,897) and electricity ($1,283).

The younger Mbaye draws no salary as executive director.

A working committee was formed to oversee development of the 14 projects. It includes the younger Mbaye; Pere Miro, director of the IOC’s umbrella aid program, called Solidarity; and Tomas Sithole, a businessman in Zimbabwe who is both an IOC member and general secretary of an entity called ANOCA. It represents all 53 of Africa’s national Olympic committees.

The IOC announced it would contribute $1.5 million toward the $3 million. Further, it said it would channel its money through Solidarity and ANOCA. Miro is quick to stress that there is “no mismanagement or even suspicion” with regard to the manner in which the younger Mbaye has carried out his fiduciary duties since the inception of the program. The change, he and others say, simply provides for “institutional grounding” and enhanced accountability.

“The issue,” Miro said, “is to give confidence to investors.”

DaimlerChrysler volunteered another $500,000. The company aims both to be a “good corporate citizen,” Senior Vice President Matthias Kleinert said, and to generate goodwill that might one day yield sales. “We have to take care of the poor regions as well because they can be the future markets,” he said.

The international track and field federation--headed by Lamine Diack, who is also Senegalese--said it would donate $140,000 in money and materials, the younger Mbaye said.

The U.S. Olympic Committee offered $50,000.

That’s where matters stood until a meeting earlier this month in Dakar. Kim, the influential South Korean IOC delegate, stood up and announced he would give $200,000 of his own money.

“At least,” Kim said. “I must help. Not just pay lip service.”

“Everyone gasped,” Sithole said of the reaction around the table to Kim’s announcement. “A pleasant surprise.”

Kim is widely believed to be interested in running for the IOC presidency when Samaranch retires this July. But Kim dismissed any suggestion that presidential politics motivated his generosity.

“In the first place,” he said, “I am not a candidate yet. This is purely humanitarian. It was purely spontaneous. I felt I should do more.”

The meeting ended with Olympafrica still searching for about $600,000 to secure all $3 million for 14 new centers.

“We have promises but nothing concrete,” the younger Mbaye said.

Those connected with the program vowed to redouble their fund-raising efforts.

“The most important aspect to me personally is the way a limited amount of money is being utilized effectively,” said A.B. Dandeh-Njie, president of the national Olympic committee of The Gambia, another West African nation. An Olympafrica center was inaugurated in a village there, Serrekunda-East, last year.

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“The centers are functional. They are not elaborate,” he said. “But if you look at Africa, what works?”