In his recent article "'A Hero Who Made This Country Proud’: Boxing, Nation, and the Politics of Sport in Kenya, ca 1950–1980," Professor Dawson McCall explores the history of Kenyan boxing from the late colonial period through the first decades of Kenyan independence. Highlighting the role of sport in the British colonial project and the importance of boxing in the promotion nation-building following Kenyan Uhuru (independence) in 1963, this article demonstrates how Kenyan boxers became Africa's most successful amateur fighters from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, while also documenting the frustrations that many Kenyan boxers expressed with the state’s inability to support them during their careers and into their elder years. This study of Kenyan boxing highlights the continuity of ideas linking sport with the politics of nation between colony and postcolony in Kenya, while also demonstrating the uses and limits of sport as a tool for nation-building and social mobility in one of Africa’s most prominent sporting countries. Read it here!