Manase Kudzai Chiweshe, PhD is one of Africa’s leading scholars of football and sport sociology, based at the University of Zimbabwe where he serves as Senior Lecturer. With over two decades of research dedicated to the social dimensions of sport, he has established himself as a pre-eminent voice on football fandom, governance, and everyday sporting life on the continent. Chiweshe authored The People’s Game: Football Fandom in Zimbabwe (2017) and edited several landmark volumes, including Football, Gambling, and Everyday Life in Zimbabwe (Routledge, 2023) and African Fans of European Football: Cultural Globalisation in Kenya and Zimbabwe (Routledge, 2025). His published journal articles span topics from match-fixing and corruption in African football to transnational fandoms, gender dynamics in football administration, and the intersection of sport and climate change. Beyond football, his sports research extends to rugby, having served as Principal Investigator on a World Rugby-funded study examining the social and health dimensions of high-level rugby in Zimbabwe. He has presented at major international conferences and is a member of the Justice League of Sport. He also supervised a PhD dissertation on football and femininity in Zimbabwe, cementing his role in shaping the next generation of sports scholars in Africa.
Manase Kudzai Chiweshe PhD.
Senior Lecturer
Department of Social and Community Development
University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe
X(Twitter): @manasekudzai
Blog: https://manasekudzai.
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-