The Gap, in Numbers
Imagine you are a parent in Nairobi. Your child has been invited to join a sports academy. Before signing them up, you check the academy's website. You want to know what happens if something goes wrong. Who is responsible for your child's safety while they are there. What coaches are and are not allowed to do. On 20 of the 23 Kenyan academy websites this audit assessed, you would find nothing at all. No safeguarding policy. No reporting contact. No code of conduct. Not a word.
Scores are out of 4 points. Each point corresponds to one publicly visible safeguarding indicator.
Kenya (23 academies)
United Kingdom (18 organisations)
Circle colour reflects score. Red = 0, amber = 1-2, green = 3-4. The orange circle is NextGen MultiSports Academy, Kenya's highest scorer at 3/4.
Four Indicators, One Consistent Story
The audit scored each site against four binary indicators. Pass or fail. The pattern is entirely consistent across all four: Kenyan academies passed at rates between 0% and 9%. UK organisations passed at rates between 55% and 80%.
The reporting mechanism indicator is the starkest: 0% of Kenyan sites vs 70% of UK organisations. A site can communicate values without a mechanism. But without a mechanism, a child or parent who wants to report a concern has nowhere to go.
What Kenyan Academies Do Communicate
Kenyan academy websites do communicate. They promote achievements, publish training schedules, feature player success stories, and advertise coaching programmes. The communication infrastructure exists. The safeguarding content is simply absent from it.
The exception is NextGen MultiSports Academy, which scored 3 out of 4. It has a visible safeguarding policy, uses child welfare language in a protective rather than purely developmental sense, and has a code of conduct for coaches. It does not have a visible reporting mechanism. Its score is directly comparable to mid-range UK grassroots clubs.
The Regulatory Explanation
The gap between Kenya and the UK is not explained by resources, commitment, or cultural attitudes toward children. It is explained by regulation. In the UK, all sports organisations working with children are required under law and under Football Association and Sport England frameworks to maintain and publicly communicate safeguarding policies. The FA requires affiliated clubs to appoint a trained welfare officer. The consequence of non-compliance is loss of affiliation.
In Kenya, there is no equivalent requirement. The Children Act 2022 significantly strengthened child protection law in Kenya. But there is no specific regulatory framework requiring sports organisations to publicly communicate their safeguarding arrangements. Kenyan academies are not choosing not to safeguard. They are simply not required to say so publicly, and most have not chosen to do so voluntarily.
What Needs to Change
A regulatory requirement for public safeguarding communication in sport
The most direct lesson from the UK comparison is that voluntary adoption is insufficient. The organisations that score well in the UK do so because they are required to. A similar requirement under Kenyan sport governance, linked to registration and affiliation, would produce a similar result without assuming voluntary compliance.
Sectoral support for academies to build safeguarding visibility
Most Kenyan academies do not have communications staff, legal advisors, or child protection officers. A sector-level resource, whether through the Sports Kenya, a child protection NGO, or the Dignity Sports Centre framework, providing template policies, example reporting mechanisms, and model codes of conduct would lower the barrier significantly.
Longitudinal tracking of safeguarding visibility as a performance indicator
This audit provides a baseline. Repeating it annually would allow tracking of whether the gap is closing, whether voluntary adoption is occurring, and whether any regulatory intervention is having the intended effect. A number that is being measured is a number that can be improved.
Methodology. A Digital Safety Footprint Audit was conducted on 23 Kenyan and 18 UK sports academy websites. Each site was scored against four binary indicators: a safeguarding or child protection policy mentioned on the website; a reporting mechanism visible; a code of conduct for coaches or staff present; and child welfare language used in a protective rather than purely developmental sense. Each indicator scores one point. Maximum score is four. Scoring was conducted through structured review of publicly accessible website content only. No internal documents, social media pages, or offline materials were assessed. The audit was conducted in April 2026. This research was conducted in collaboration with the Dignity Sports Centre safeguarding programme.