Two chess masters who are inspiring youngsters on the continent will be hosted on this week’s edition of African Voices Changemakers, the Globacom-sponsored CNN magazine programme.
The guests on the 30–minute programme are James Kang’aru Mwangi, a Kenyan top chess player and instructor accredited by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), and Tunde Onakoya, a Nigerian and founder of ‘Chess in Slums Africa’.
Mwangi who was inducted into the prestigious ‘Forbes Africa 30 under 30 for 2021’ on account of his prowess in the game, was trained at Technical University of Kenya (TUK) where his chess skills were developed.
He is the youngest national coach to have been appointed to lead any Kenyan team having been selected to head the Kenyan junior chess team at the age of 24 back in 2017. Skilled in his craft, the Economics graduate has bagged the title of the best coach of the year in chess for a record four times between 2014 and 2019.
Onakoya on the other hand is a top chess professional in Nigeria. He is the founder of ‘Chess in Slums Africa’ an academy which develops children from impoverished communities through the game of chess.
On what motivated him, Onakoya said, “I grew up in the slums of Ikorodu, but learning chess at a young age saved me. Sometime in 2018, I went back to where I grew up in Ikorodu and saw that nothing had changed. There were still children on the streets and I feared that those children were never going to get the opportunity to live out their true potential. At the time I was already a National Master of chess, so I and my friends took a few chess boards back to the community and started teaching the children chess as a way to get them off the streets, engage their minds and teach them skills that would expose them to opportunities beyond the confines of their environment”.
The duo will engage viewers with their stories on CNN African Voices Changemakers on Saturday at 9.30 a.m. on DSTV channel 401 and on Sunday at 4.30 a.m., 7.30 a.m., 12.30 p.m. and 7. p.m. Another repeat will be aired on Monday at 4.00 a.m. while a two-part, 15-minute rebroadcast will hold on Tuesday and Wednesday at 6.45 p.m.
