Interpreting and enacting 'empowerment' in sport for development: The perspectives of UK stakeholders on a partnership-based programme in Malawi

This article examines the interpretation and enactment of ‘empowerment’ in a transnational Sport for Development programme that involved a partnership between a UK university and local stakeholders and practitioners in Malawi. In addressing whether the programme was underpinned by a neoliberal or more radical, progressive variant of empowerment, we employed semi-structured interviews with three categories of UK actors: university senior managers; university staff involved in project delivery; and student-volunteers. The findings reveal conflicting perspectives and tensions among these groups. The project
staff team sought to promote a radical variant of empowerment through the programme. However, this was constrained by the use of the programme to burnish the University brand in the context of a competitive higher education marketplace and a tendency on the part of student-volunteers to uncritically position themselves as ‘superior’ to Malawian participants and view their involvement in instrumental terms. These perspectives had far reaching implications on relations of power within the programme, the extent to which it functioned on a partnership basis and whose interests were prioritised in its delivery.