The Berlin Marathon, along with London one of the sport’s six ‘majors’, will not go ahead as planned on 27 September after Germany extended a ban on large-scale gatherings until 24 October.
In a short statement organizers said the event “cannot take place” as scheduled, without specifying whether a postponement was possible. They would “co-ordinate further steps”, they said.
The Berlin race was scheduled to take place the weekend before the London Marathon’s rearranged date of 4 October. The London Marathon, originally due to take place this Sunday, was postponed amid the coronavirus outbreak.
A rearranged Berlin marathon would probably have to take place in mid-November at the earliest, given the New York marathon is to be staged on 1 November. The Berlin race, famous for its fast course, has been the scene of the past seven men’s marathon world records, most recently Eliud Kipchoge’s two hours one minute 39 seconds in 2018.
Last year, Kenenisa Bekele, who is due to go up against Kipchoge at London this year, won in 2:01:41 – the second fastest time in history. Germany has suffered fewer coronavirus deaths than the UK – 4,948 compared to 17,337 according to figures collated by John Hopkins University – and has already begun a partial lifting of its lockdown measures.
Berlin Marathon September date off and no word on rescheduling
Coronavirus how it hit football finance in Africa
Just four months into 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has swept across the planet, obliterating sports events and forcing suspensions, postponements and outright cancellations.
A sporting calendar that promised so much – including the Olympics, Africa Women’s Cup of Nations, European Championships, African Athletics championship, the CHAN tournament – has instead become a series of blank weeks and months as event after event succumbed to postponements and cancellations.
The end of live sport around the world has meant that players, coaches, clubs and federations have seen money dry up. Across Africa this has presented many challenges. Here, we look at those affecting football in particular.
”Football is life – the moment football stops, it is like life has stopped too”, laments David Juma, captain of Kakamega Homeboyz in Kenya’s Premier League.
For all that football is Africa’s most popular sport, the passion does not easily translate to an attractive bank balance even in normal times in comparison to leagues across Europe and America.
According to the KPL – one of East Africa’s top football leagues – 50% of its footballers earn an average monthly salary of $200. This leaves most players dependent on match bonuses, travelling allowance and winning bonuses.
Without games to play, none of these can be secured. Added to this has been the exit of league sponsors SportPesa.
And other players in the KPL do not earn a monthly wage at all, and earn by having jobs with the company that owns the club. In the pandemic, most of those companies are themselves struggling.
“We were told we will take a 50% pay cut – our boss is also in business, and because of corona there is no business that is doing well,” Juma continues.
“As a businessman, he knew paying our full salaries was unsustainable – so this was instead of sending away people unpaid.”
The structural threat of poverty and inequality to the Arab Region
continued from last week
Arab governments and their external sponsors tend to prioritize the wrong threats. Most Arab governments continue to introduce superficial reforms in pivotal sectors such as education, employment, and anti-corruption, but their efforts mostly remain unsuccessful or limited in their impact. Simultaneously, the broader Arab trend in most countries since the end of the Cold War around 1990 sees steadily increasing pauperisation, vulnerability, perceived injustice and helplessness, and disparities.
Long-term, cross-generational poverty now seems inevitable for families that suffer short-term setbacks in their income, because most Arab states are unable to generate the new decent jobs or provide the social services required to pull poor and vulnerable families out of their miserable condition. Recent studies indicate that the Middle East is the most unequal region in the world, with the top 10 percent of its people accounting for 61 percent of wealth, compared to 47 percent in the United States and 36 percent in Western Europe. Inequalities are documented in virtually every sector of life and society, including rural/urban, gender, income, ethnicity, and others, suggesting that this has become a deeply engrained structural problem rather than a fleeting phenomenon due to short-term economic stresses.
Poverty, vulnerability, and inequality have converged into a single dynamic that is deeply anchored in existing economic realities and state policy deficiencies that show no signs of changing appreciably, and consequently they will be difficult to reverse in the short term. The 2018 ESCWA and Economic Research Forum report indicated that some Arab countries, including Egypt, have even reversed decades-old recent trends and registered a rise in fertility rates in the past five years, which will increase the demographic pressures on economic and social systems that have been unable to keep pace with population growth even when fertility rates were declining in recent decades. According to the report, an estimated nine million Arabs are born every year, nearly two million in Egypt alone, all of whom will need education, health services, housing, water, and jobs that the Arab states already are unable to provide to the existing population.
Beyond the pain that this situation brings to poor and vulnerable families is the additional dangers that societies suffer, such as fragmentation, political instability, social, class, and sectarian tensions, citizen alienation from the state, and sometimes political violence, criminality, or illegal migration. External powers have done little to address these massive social and economic problems, and in most cases have supported regime policies which make them worse.
Jordan offers a timely example of how social, economic, and political stresses on families lead to wider tensions in society, ultimately generating serious splits between citizens and their state. From the late 1990s to 2018, for example, Jordanians significantly increased their perceptions of injustice and inequality in their lives, especially their treatment by the state and its institutions. Data from polls by the respected local consultancy NAMA, directed by Dr. Fares Braizat, shows those who say that justice does not exist in their lives increased from 8 to 24 percent in that period, and the perception of inequality increased from 10 to 30 percent.
These sentiments are especially high in rural areas and among those who migrated from rural to urban centers in recent decades; most of these citizens depend on state employment or other state-related income, have not benefited from private sector investments or jobs, and increasingly in recent decades have found themselves unable to meet their basic family needs. Polls by NAMA and the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan reveal some disturbing trends in family-level economic and political distress, including the critical perceptions of injustice that seem to be a crucial driver of anti-government protests.
Jordanians who see no justice in their lives increased from 40 to 46 percent in just the four months between June and September 2018, two-thirds of citizens feel the country is moving in the wrong direction, 72 percent of households said they could not meet their basic expenses, compared to 42 percent in mid-2011, and two-thirds of households reported their economic situation is worse than it was a year ago. The inability to meet basic household needs, or barely to do so but without being able to save any money, is also mirrored in regional polls by the Arab Barometer and the Doha-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, both of whose pan-Arab surveys indicate around 70-75 percent of families cannot afford to pay for their most basic needs.
Protests in the past year in Jordan and across the entire Arab region including Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, Lebanon, and other lands, indicate fact that citizens are stressed by a debilitating combination of political and socio-economic factors in their lives. Many suffer from precarious socio-economic conditions as well as their lack of political power to address compelling issues like corruption, political accountability of the elite, and being treated with disdain by their state. The most dramatic example of the latter was the desire of the Algerian ruling elite to nominate President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for a fifth consecutive term, despite his near comatose physical and mental state, which makes a mockery of the presidential election being an opportunity for citizens to voice their political views.
Rami Khouri of American University of Beirut stated that these powerful internal forces of discontent and public protest by large numbers of citizens across almost the entire Arab region have already started to impact on their states’ foreign policies and international relations, in several ways. In many situations where millions of citizens suffer sustained poverty and marginalization that leads to alienation from their state and society, large numbers of them (especially unemployed young men) join the reservoirs of vulnerable people who are easily recruited into militias, terror groups, and other organizations that impact both domestic calm and foreign relations.
In some cases discontented citizens mobilize to vent their anger at their countries’ policies towards Israel, as happened in Jordan in 2018, when the King succumbed to public pressure and rescinded a clause in the 2004 peace agreement with Israel that allowed Israel to maintain control of a few patches of Jordanian land in the Jordan Valley. Turbulent conditions triggered by large numbers of dissatisfied citizens also prompt many of the best educated among them to emigrate, thus depriving the country of precisely the youthful talent and energy it needs to overcome its lingering socio-economic stagnation and political stresses.
Finally, when governments increase and harden security controls on their citizens in order to ensure “stability”, as many Arab countries have done since 2011, the result is usually the opposite. Popular discontent rises, the ruling elite expands its powers and clientelist networks, economies lumber along without significant new growth or investments, the state relies more and more on external security and financial support to survive, and the cycle of pent-up discontent that exploded in the 2010-11 uprisings starts to build again. This should prompt scholars of international relations, along with the ruling elites of the Arab states in question, to examine more closely the worsening internal conditions of these countries, especially the mindsets of hundreds of millions of citizens whose attitudes and actions ultimately will determine the fate of their societies and the direction of the entire region.
Signs You Don’t Make Enough Money and Overcoming the Problem
At a certain stage of life, every person may feel the lack of money. Probably, one has spent too much on unnecessary items or the level of income is insufficient to cover all the must-pay bills. Unfortunately, this can be even both. It is not necessary to rush into finding an FX broker and investing all the money remaining in your bank account. Start with a proper analysis of the reasons, check the proposed strategies, and look for a wise way out of the financial crisis you are facing. Here are the signs of low income and possible solutions.
● Monthly Use of Credit Cards
Have you noticed that in the middle of every month, you need to use a credit card to pay in a grocery store, as well as to cover some bills? Probably, you are used to spending more than you afford. Or the monthly income is insufficient. To understand the main reason for this is to stop using credit cards. At first, this seems a great way out of any financial difficulty. However, with a growing interest on your debt, you will need one more loan to cover this credit. Using credit cards regularly is the beginning of a vicious circle that should be torn immediately.
● There Is No Money by the Middle of the Month
This is the reason why you are forced to use credit cards. If you need to struggle to survive until the end of the month and make ends meet, this is the sign of insufficient income. One may start thinking about ways to increase the level of income. Looking for a new job or asking for a raise can help you get out of the financial difficulties you are in. Among possible solutions, one can also start working on an additional project, learn the principles of Forex trading to start making money on the stocksexchange or get the second job.
If you have understood that there is a lack of qualification that stands between you and a highly-paid job, it makes sense to consider getting an education to apply for a well-paid position. This is a long-term solution, however, a sure-fire way to get out of the financial crisis challenging you now. Have you ever dreamt of becoming a broker? This can be the time to make dreams come true and get the chance to increase your income at the same time.
● You Cannot Pay All the Monthly Bills
Lots of people feel that the burden of bills is sometimes unbearable. However, if you face the same challenge to choose which of them you are going to pay this month while leaving some of them for the next, this is the sign that the money you make is insufficient for necessities. Be sure that you have carefully checked your expenses. It is important to cut the luxuries and save as much as possible. Give preference to cheaper meals cooked at home instead of going out. Buy only the items you really need and consider using the services of companies with more budget-friendly rates on the market.
● You Cannot Cope with an Emergency
Having no emergency funds leads to the situation that you are forced to use credit cards to pay for an unexpected repair bill. As the debt accumulates, while the emergency fund does not, this will cause the domino effect. Coping with one emergency, you get yourself into another one. Start saving money for an emergency fund. This may sound surprising, however, having a back-up fund will help get out of difficulties without getting into debt. Begin with a mere $50 saving per month trying to gradually increase it.
● There Is Nothing Else to Cut
You have already forgotten about eating out, you buy meat only twice per week, and go to the cheapest barber in the neighbourhood, however, you cannot still make ends meet. What is more, just a thought about getting a bill makes you worry and leads to nightmares. This is the most evident proof of having an insufficient income. When everything is strictly cut and there is not enough money to cover living expenses, it is necessary to look for another source of income. In the meanwhile, it makes sense to set a bare-bone budget that will help you survive during the transition period.
Having financial difficulties is normal for all people. The most important is to take one’s time to evaluate the situation and find the right way out of it. Every crisis is the best time to take steps that will lead you to wealth and success.
