Chess offers Nigerian slum children a new move

Tunde Onakoya was moved by his desire to uplift the youth of the slums

A project aimed at bringing them hope and confidence

More than a dozen children gather under a canopy in Makoko, the floating slum in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial center. Aged 8 to 18, they are focused on the chess boards before them, calculating moves that will allow them to win the game.

Chess master Tunde Onakoya is supervising the tournament. Each week, he and the rest of the team at Chess in Slums Africa teach children in low-income communities to play chess.

‘Chess in Slums Africa,’ which was established by Onakoya in 2018, is an initiative geared towards empowering young ones. The club runs on the philosophy that every child has the capacity for greatness regardless of his or her background. It has trained over 200 children and secured enduring scholarships for 20 of them.

“I realized that every time I shared the stories of one of our kids on Facebook or Twitter, people were willing to donate money to fund their education,” Onakoya says. “So, through that medium about 12 children got scholarships.”
Chess in Slums Africa has also partnered with tech-focused organizations like Venture Garden Foundations, allowing them to secure even more scholarships home and abroad for some of their best chess players.

His Kenyan counterpart, Mwangi, 28, a graduate of the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) and CEO of Epitome School of Chess, is the first chess player ever on the African continent to receive the Forbes award. His chess skills were chiseled at TUK, which has also produced several top players through his university chess club.

Onakoya and his team aren’t the only ones that have been making chess moves on the continent.

There are 46 countries in Africa with strong chess communities, according to the African Chess Federation. Since 2014, the continent has produced six new grandmasters — the highest possible title in the game — in Algeria, South Africa, and Egypt.

“My greatest desire for the Chess in Slums project is to create a future where children from impoverished communities aren’t just defined by their community,” says Onakoya, adding that his goal is to “help them discover their truest potential.”

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