The Long Game: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's return — and the African foundation he spent three decades building
Billionaires Africa | 24.07.2026 21:06
When Kirsan Ilyumzhinov told Billionaires.Africa that Africa was the "future of human civilization," it was not a campaign line. He was not running for anything at the time, and there was no audience to court. It was simply what he had been saying, and acting on, since long before the rest of world sport discovered the continent — through twenty-three years as president of FIDE, the world chess federation, and through tens of millions of dollars of his own money spent putting chess into African classrooms, tournaments and youth programmes.
