Modern sports in Ethiopia during the late imperial period, especially during Haile Selassie's rule, was part of a larger attempt to modernize the empire as well as a way to appropriate new athletic practices and forms of leisure. It left an imprint on the educational system, urban development, and a youth training undergirded by conceptions of useful recreation and the fit human body for the Ethiopian ‘New Man’. During the period I have looked at, sports also functioned as a political propaganda tool at home and abroad. This especially holds true for the occupation and post-liberation periods. Sports became a way to stage or contest loyalty to the emperor and to demonstrate Ethiopia's road to progress. In educational institutions as well as in volunteer organizations such as the YMCA and the Boy Scouts, sports offered multiple entry points for foreign soft power from diverse, often conflicting, ends of the political spectrum during the Cold War. In this final chapter, I return to the thematic gateways to study zemenawīnet that I described in the Introduction. I conclude by suggesting further fields for exploring social transformation through sports in the Ethiopia of the twentieth century.

Zemenawīnet through the Lens of Sports

What does the perspective of modern sports contribute to recent discussions on Zemenawīnet (Ethiopian modernity) that have brought to the fore new perspectives on coloniality, the relation of the religious and the modern, urban developments, and specific forms of subject formation? As this book has shown, sports cannot be viewed in isolation, but has an important part to play in a nation's identity formation and politics. This book has focused on Ethiopia, but also argues to look at the multiplicity of athletic developments beyond the framework of the empire – especially in its relationship to the Middle East. Thus, it contributes to a scholarship which emphasize ‘South–South’ relations in sports, which cannot be easily subsumed under geographical labels such as ‘African’ or ‘Middle Eastern’ sports history. Although Ethiopia could successfully resist long-term colonization, the book contributes to the historical scholarship about sports, coloniality and modernity in Africa and beyond.