Nigerian chess master Tunde Onakoya has an important goal: to give at least one million African children the chance to lead a better life by teaching them the game of chess.
In his deeply personal, riveting DLD24 talk, Onakoya recalls growing up in poverty in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, and how he had to leave school when he was 10 years old.
“My parents told me, ‘You know what? You have to stop going to school and do something to support the family.’”
He discovered chess at a local barber shop and “it was love at first sight”, Onakoya says. “I had found something that was going to become my intellectual identity.”
Through the game of chess, “I could find my place in the world again”, Onakoya explains – and that experience prompted him to create the charity Chess in Slums in Africa after becoming a champion himself.
Millions of children would benefit from learning chess, just like he did, Onakoya believes. “What if they could excel at it and become champions?”, he says. “Society’s perception of them would change. Because if a child without any education could show aptitude for chess in all its complexities, people would listen to them.”
In five years, Chess in Slums has opened up new horizons to more than 10,000 children across Africa. The NGO finances its important work partly through crowd-funding and accepts donations via Project Bcause.
Watch the video to find out more about chess as a tool for empowerment, its impact on education and career opportunities and Tunde Onakoya’s vision for the future of Chess in Slums.
