Maqonda Ndlovu
FIDE Director for Chess Development and internationally acclaimed Chess Grandmaster Nigel Short (MBE) says there is potential to make chess one of the national sport codes in Namibia if the administrators work hard to develop it, especially at the grassroots level.
He was speaking to New Era Sport during his recent visit to Namibia, where he also participated in and won the Windhoek Open Grand Prix as part of his three-day working visit.
“The Namibia Chess Federation (NCF) has a lot of registered players. They have a lot of potential. There is chess activity in some schools, and that should be where they target their development by influencing people at a very early age,” Short said.
The director added that chess is a young people’s game.
The English-born chess grandmaster, columnist, coach, and commentator said Namibia does not have enough rated tournaments, which would allow players to gain the required ratings to compete at a higher level.
“When you have ratings, people have something to play for. They have a measure of whether they are making progress or not. The NCF just needs to hold lots of tournaments with licensed arbiters. The other issue is that there are not a lot of these qualified arbiters, and this group needs to be increased as well,” he said.
The grandmaster said there seems to be a bit of parsimoniousness from the NCF on certain things because it is not very expensive to get arbiters trained.
Short said the more rated tournaments Namibia holds, the more people will play the game and the more the levels of chess will rise.
“The new administration is changing that, but I feel they can still do more. People need to play regularly. For example, you can have club games going on during the week and have a bigger competition over the weekend. The base of rated players in Namibia is very low.”
He said Namibia will continue to benefit from FIDE through his office as he will continue having engagements to see how they can improve the standard of chess in Namibia because he would not want to come up with readily prescribed solutions but rather formulate solutions suitable for NCF.
“Unfortunately, FIDE does not have resources as big as those of Fifa, for example, but we do provide some funds for countries like Namibia. It is not a lot, and it limits what we can do. Also, chess is not an expensive sport. The federation has to do most of the work to raise funds for itself. Something needs to be done to create a self-sustaining economy within chess,” he
advised. Short said his position at FIDE allows him to be a catalyst, and he would gladly assist NCF in coming up with ways of improving the sport, saying he would like to see Namibia doing well at the All Africa Games in Ghana next year.
For the first time, chess will be part of the All Africa Games.
On their part, the NCF, through their president, Goodwill Khoa, paid tribute to Short’s visit, saying having a chess grandmaster visit the country is certainly no easy or cheap feat.
“His presence in Namibia is very inspirational, and he was impressed with what we are doing as a federation,” Khoa said.