Taekwondo is the most popular martial art in Africa. It is pratctised in more than 40 countries. These include South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Libya, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, Uganda, Lesotho, Botswana, Gambia, Senegal, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon just to mention a few.

But Africa still continues to lag behind the other continents, Africa has not been able to perform well in the Olympics, or the World Championships. Itr is not because there are no capable players. One of the main reasons is lack of exposure and championships even in Africa. In most cases, African countries do not participate in any championships, citing lack of funds. And where they do, they send only skeleton teams.

The other problem has been constant wrangles among the officials of National Federations. This has greatly contributed to the decline of interest in most cases. In Africa itself, very few championships are organised.

While we cannot fault the African Taekwondo Union for this, I feel they should be more strict, and impose some form of punishment or restrictions on those countries which are not active in championships.

To begin with, Africa must have junior championships. Currently there are none. Then the African championships must be held regularly, which is not the case today. Africa should also be divided into zones, so that countries in these zones can organise championships locally at greatly reduced costs.

There is no doubt that Africa has the potential to be a great and successful taekwondo continents. But it has to invest funds, resources and human capabilities to make it a success.

Taekwondo is one of the fastest and most popular martial arts in the world today. It is practised in more than 130 countries. Taekwondo has been an Olympic sport since 1988. It is also one of the sports in many continental games. It has proved to be a crowd puller in all these events. Strangely though, taekwondo is not in the Commonwealth Games.

The Commonwealth Games are the second largest gatherling of athletes after the Olympic Games. Many of the sports power houses are members and active participants of these Games. And they are also active in taekwondo. These countries include Canada, Australia, Britain, India South Africa, New Zealand, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana to mention just a few. So the following is there.

So why can't these countries lobby for the inclusion of taekwondo into the Commonwealth Games? It is the logican way to go. It would also give those countries which are weak in other sports to get some medals too.