The visit will be the first time the chess genius will be coming to any West African nation but more importantly, the visit may be the tonic the chess federation needs to kick start it's long aged dream of 'Chess In School' programme which is already existing on a small scale in some private institutions.
The Nigeria Chess Federation (NCF), President Mr. Lekan Adeyemi disclosed over the weekend that the entire board of the federation is delighted to receive the chess icon and his team for formal discussions on the possibility of the Kasparov Chess Foundation coming to play a key role in chess development among the pupils in Nigeria.
"We (the NCF board) are glad that Kasparov and his team are coming here to work out the modalities for his Chess Foundation to operate here too after it's success in other developing chess nations," he commented in a telephone interview.
Although the Russian Grandmaster is a candidate for the next FIDE election in August this year, Mr. Adeyemi reinstated that the visit is strictly for chess development and not politics.
"We are aware that he is a candidate for the next FIDE election but Nigeria is yet to make a stand on whether we will support him or not. More importantly, this Foundation has being in operation in Africa since 2012 and we are glad to be a beneficiary of this great icon's initiative in chess.
According to the itinerary released last night, the 11-man team will arrive Abuja Thursday night in a private jet and are expected to meet the board of the NCF at the Hilton Hotel Abuja.
On Friday, 31 January, the combined team of the KCF-AFRICA and the NCF will visit the Hon. Minister and Chairman, National Sports Commission, The Honourable Minister of Education and the Executive Secretary, Universal Basic Education.
The team will fly down to Lagos where they will meet with prominent captains of Industries, the Media and stake holders of chess in the country before departing the country in the continuation of the tour of other African countries.
The Kasparov Chess Foundation officially launched its African operations in March 2012 with the aim to promote chess as a tool for education and social development across the broader African continent.
The foundation in its bid to facilitate it's planned expansion have recently partnered with the trustees of a proven chess in schools program called MiniChess. The MiniChess program has been developed over years of teaching chess to “entry phase” learners (five to eight years) as part of their school curriculum.
It is currently used with great success in more than 170 schools in South Africa and reaches more than 45 000 learners per week. The program is expanding rapidly and we already have advanced plans in place to launch formal operations in Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda during the 2014 school year.
It is hoped that in the next few years, the MiniChess program will reach out to the entire African continent as a tool to help address the educational needs of foundation phase learners.
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