Learning through South-South Development: Cuban-African Partnerships in Sport and Physical Education

Overview & Synopsis

Since the 1990s, Cuba has offered scholarships to students from low-resource countries to attend the Escuela Internacional de Educación Física y Deporte (EIEFD) for a six-year degree in sport, physical education, and coaching. Drawing on the experiences of EIEFD graduates from four Southern African countries (Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, and Lesotho) the authors discuss the meanings that this South-South cooperation through education holds for international students and for the self-sufficiency of sport and physical-education systems within partner countries. The authors also show that upon returning home, many EIEFD graduates are left to negotiate insular job markets and inconsistent domestic commitments to public sport and physical education. The implications for South-South development through international education, and the place of sport and physical education therein, are discussed.