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This article was first published in the July/August 2016 international edition of Accounting and Business magazine.

It has been a rocky start for Kenya’s campaign for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has already taken the momentous decision to suspend Russia’s athletics federation (a decision under review as we went to press), one of the world’s sporting giants, after many Russian athletes tested positive for performance enhancing drugs and allegations of state-sponsored doping.

Russia’s suspension has seen Kenya scramble into action. Kenya’s long-distance runners are respected and honoured around the world, and Kenyans take great pride in their athletes, individually and as a nation, but many of Kenya’s athletes have also tested positive. Dick Pound, the former World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president, once said it was ‘pretty clear that there are a lot of performance enhancing drugs in Kenya’. 

Forty Kenyan athletes have tested positive for drugs use since 2011 and WADA has been pushing Kenya hard to make its anti-doping programme comply with the WADA code. Its suspension of Kenya’s anti-doping programme in May was accompanied by a declaration from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that it was ‘a further reflection of the IAAF’s concerns about the level of commitment to anti-doping at the national level in Kenya’. WADA lifted its suspension after a new anti-doping law was approved in a special sitting of parliament to try to avoid a ban.

Kenya may have satisfied WADA, the IAAF and the IOC with its new legislation, but it has further problems to contend with. The sporting authority for track and field – Athletics Kenya – has been troubled by allegations of corruption and some very public protests by Kenyan athletes, seeking a change in leadership in the organisation that represents them. 

In March, the New York Times reported that in 2009 the US sporting goods manufacturer Nike faced the prospect of seeing its brand on Kenyan athletes’ shirts being replaced by those of its Chinese rival Li-Ning, a company set up by the eponymous former Olympics gymnast. Nike agreed to pay Athletics Kenya an annual sponsorship of between US$1.3m and US$1.5m plus a US$100,000 honorarium as well as a one-time ‘commitment bonus’ of US$500,000 to keep its brand on the shirts. The money was supposed to help train and support poor Kenyan athletes, but was withdrawn by three top officials, who were suspended by the IAAF for six months at the end of November 2015 following protests by the athletes when the deal became public. 

The IAAF has kept Kenya on a monitoring list of countries with doping problems until the end of the year. It also says it tests Kenya’s elite athletes more than those of any other country. Kenya could face more serious sanctions from the track body at the end of the year if it can’t sort out its drug-testing programme.

Although Kenya is allowed to compete in Rio, its anti-doping programme needed to be ‘significantly strengthened by the end of the current year’, the IAAF says. 

For the Rio Games, the IOC is doubling its budget for the pre-Olympic testing programme, paying special attention to countries it deems non-compliant, such as Kenya and Mexico. It will also focus on Morocco and Ethiopia, which have had their athletes test positive recently too.

Alnoor Amlani FCCA is an independent consultant based in East Africa