ARSENAL SHIRT OF SHAME

Arsenal has secured the biggest sleeve sponsor deal in Premier League history after ‘Visit Rwanda’ was announced as the club’s official Tourism Partner. The deal is estimated to be worth £30 million for a period of 3 years.

The immorality behind this deal is that the Rwandan president who is a known Arsenal fan has decided to do this deal totally disregarding the important and urgent issues that the country is facing which would have been alleviated by spending those £30 million on them:

  1. Famine: 3 million Rwandans are on the brink of starvation, 150,000 have left their home as a desperate measure to find any means to survive and more than 5ooo killed by hunger.
  2.  Malnutrition: 38% of children under 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition according to USAID research.
  3. Poverty: 63% of the Rwanda population still live in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as less than $1.25 a day.

Furthermore, the World Food Programme has a budget of USD 52 million (2013-2018)  to use in enhancing national capacity to design national hunger solutions and food assistance.

Clearly, Rwanda and Rwandans need urgent help, this is not the right time to sponsor Arsenal while children are dying of hunger and famine is destroying lives.

What  Arsenal need to do:

Arsenal should use the money received from Rwanda and fund the Food assistance of the World Food Programme in Rwanda so that more lives are saves.

More about the WFP in Rwanda can be found here

Rwanda and Arsenal deal in media: