Although the role of sports in shaping/changing urban and regional
landscapes through megalomaniac building of stadia, golf
courses, among other spectacular artifacts have recently attracted tremendous
academic research interests, sports’ role in improving collapsing health-care
infrastructure in developing countries is poorly documented. Here, we show
the potentials of football in multi-stakeholder mobilization for financing/
improving/ in urban health-care Nigeria using contributions towards heart
diseases treatment by Kanu Heart Foundation and campaigns by Nigeria’s
international footballers. Geo-demographic analysis of secondary data is
applied to highlight inadequacy of healthcare in urban Cross River State,
like of urban (like rural) Nigeria. How various diplomacy concepts could be
employed by urban managements to mobilize sports-heroes, stakeholders
(professionals: players, managers, clubs; civil society, etc) for fund-raising
towards improving healthcare in Nigeria is described. The policy implication
of this paper includes employing multi-dimensional diplomacy for managing
multi-stakeholder urban sports and health development programmes as a
means of surmounting the problem of inadequate funding for urban health development in Cross River State, Nigeria. Although this article focuses on
Nigeria, its description of health-care deficits and findings speak for much of
sub-Saharan Africa and developing countries.