Kriss Akabusi - In the spotlight

With athletics in the spotlight and the Olympics on the way, Caitlin Mackesy Davies caught up with one of sport’s most familiar faces about a less familiar role.

You’ve founded The Akabusi Charitable Trust (TACT), can you briefly explain what it does?

We support rural communities in Imo State, Nigeria, where my parents come from. The people who can work have largely left the rural communities to go to the urban epicenters to earn a crust, which means that the only people who live there are young people, old people, and women. So we’re focusing on getting women to work. One hundred pounds goes a very long way in setting up a business for a woman. And once they have a business going, they keep it going, because they have a vested interest called children.

Sanitation and health is also a big part of TACT’s work, why is that?

My mother had built a hospital, but passed away, and I wanted to carry on her legacy. So I asked some people to take an inventory of what was going on in the area, and there were, funnily enough, plenty of hospitals. But what was deficient was work in the water-borne diseases sector. The majority of people who were dying in Nigeria were dying from water-borne diseases. So that became my main interest, and I also realised that micro-finance was a great way of working with people. Now our main focus is on micro-finance and developing cottage industries, as this was the area in which we could see more direct impact and is in line with my thinking on business and social responsibility.

When did your journey towards the Trust start?

The trigger was when I went to visit my parents in their village about thirty years ago, and I was playing football, having a kick-about with kids ranging from five or six to seventeen. One particular kid got my attention, who I thought was around seven or eight and I asked about him. In fact, he was my biological brother, one of my father’s many children (he had ten wives), and he wasn’t seven or eight, he was 15. I realised then how badly malnutrition had affected his growth. I realised then, as a young athlete and having served in the army, how lucky I was – and that I would not have been in that position had I been born and bred in Nigeria, rather than London.

Is a sustainable approach important to you?

Traditionally, charity work in Africa has involved the big capital expenditure work – building a school, a hospital, some sort of facility – but when the benefactor leaves there are no systems or processes in place to continue the good work. The only thing to do is to help people to help themselves. Yes, I could go to Nigeria and drop a few bob around, and have people bigging me up, but that doesn’t do anything for the infrastructure; they are all dependent on you. I don’t want them dependent on me, what I do want is people to start small businesses and become dependent on themselves and each other.

What’s the most satisfying part of the Trust’s work for you?

To be able to go to rural Nigeria and help people that cannot be helped by the major charities – Christian Aid, Unicef – that work at a macro level. I go straight into the interior and work with this one, and this one and this one – and the beauty of the work that I do is that I see real people whose lives are drastically changed who can then become instigators of good stuff in their community, because of the help of you, the person that I meet here. It’s a phenomenal experience.

In this tough economy, what is the crucial thing for charities to do?

You have to develop your relationship with people, and they have to buy your passion. People give because they engage with a passion you have. Nigeria is pretty obscure for someone living in London or Cheshire, but if they catch your passion and your vision they end up saying “I’ve got a fiver, or £500, in my pocket and I’ll give it to you”. I do think that there was a time when charities began to sprawl and get away from their core message. So you have to get back to your core message – what are you really, really, really about? – and you have to stick to that and be passionate about that, and communicate that. And people will come to your aid once they really know what you are about, because it helps them to engage with what they are about.

What is the main thing that drives you?

A massive drive is that I saw in that boy, myself. And I recognised that that boy could have been me; that the Kriss Akabusi that people see, read about, and hear about, is only here by dint of the infrastructure that was around me, that supported me, and guided me. Without that infrastructure I could be that Nigerian boy, whose innate potential and gifts would not have been seen in the world. That all I am and all I can be, could have been hidden in the malnourished body. How many more Akabusis, Einsteins – name anyone you like – how many more phenomenal contributors are there out in rural centres throughout the world, whose gift to the world cannot be seen? If I can do something for even one or two, that is a massive drive for me.

You are part of ProDono, which lets people spend time with you in return for a donation. Who would most like to spend an hour with?

I’d love to have sat down in the back room with Martin Luther King in April of ’68, just before the Memphis rally, around the table eating and discussing his thoughts and where he was going – to be there half an hour before he spoke, when you get the hopes and the fears, the “what do you think the reaction will be?,” “what should I put out there?”. A relaxed opportunity to see a man grappling with the moment that history had prepared him for.

How much are you looking forward to the 2012 Olympics?

I wish I were 20 years younger! It’s great for the sportsmen, it’s great for the country. I’m hoping the British will be like the Americans when I went to LA in 1984. They really engaged with it and it showed the best of the human spirit. You see the things that you have in common with one another, and you see the best of human endeavor and what it can do. I can’t wait for it.

There’s also the legacy of the infrastructure. If you drive through East London now the landscape has been changed forever. The boxing clubs, swimming clubs and cycling clubs that could come forward… remember, you don’t need to travel to Nigeria to find people who are marginalised and the [summer’s] riots were ample proof of that. The rupture that happened on our TV screens showed that there are people who need our help. If people get involved in [keeping the legacy going], that would be brilliant.

What more do you want to achieve?

Ultimately, I want to make a difference. In the UK I’m part of a group called Footdown, which supports and mentors leaders, and I’d love to make a difference in the leadership of Nigeria. You just don’t know where your path is going to take you. I do know it’s something I would do if presented with the opportunity.