An African in China brings global sports to Africa — Q&A with Lloyd Randall

This is a conversation with Lloyd Randall, sportscaster for Star Times, a state-affiliated but privately-held Chinese company founded in Beijing in 1988. Star Times provides affordable set-top boxes that bring satellite TV sports, kung fu movies, and official Chinese state news into the homes of millions of people in more than 30 African countries.

Randall, who once stunt-doubled for boxing champion Mike Tyson, has lived in China for 14 years. He was born in the 1980s in Freetown, the capital of the West African nation of Sierra Leone — population 8.5 million — to a family with branches worldwide. Randall lived through the country’s civil war that lasted from 1991 to 2002, at one point spending four days under fire from RPGs.

Randall moved to Beijing as a student in the early-2000s during the city’s pre-Olympics boom, and completed degrees in information technology and corporate management. Then he returned to the passion of his youth in Africa: sportscasting.

Randall recently spoke with Jonathan Landreth. This is an abridged, edited transcript of their conversation.

Yours is not a quintessential African name. Please tell us its history.

I’m from an ethnicity called the Creole people. We are the slaves who returned to Africa. My people settled in Freetown, the land of the free. My last name, Randall, is very European. Most Africans might have a Western first name, but their last names are typical African. We Creole make up a small percentage of the people in Sierra Leone. We have strong links to Afro-Americans and the Caribbean. If you meet an African with a surname like Randall, Campbell, Johnson, or Smith, those are my people. We are nomads. We travel a lot. We scattered around the world, in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, the Netherlands and Spain. My forebears landed in Freetown in 1787, even before abolition, and we’ve been there ever since.

What is your earliest memory of China?

It might sound cliché, but a lot of people who grew up where I’m from used to have VHS cassette players and were completely fascinated by the kung fu movies of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and the Monkey King. Then, there were the Bruce Lee movies. I think I watched “Enter the Dragon,” a gazillion times. It was probably the most-used VHS cassette in the world. In primary school I had a clique of friends who were huge kung fu movie fans. Then I started to read a lot about China, the Great Wall, and China’s history through World War II. I’ve always been a student of history.

Describe your school.

It was an elite school affiliated with the oldest university in West Africa. Freetown was once considered the Athens of West Africa. After the slave trade in Sierra Leone, we had a good justice system and good education. A lot of other West Africans — Nigerians, Gambians, Ghanians — used to come because we had the first Western-style university in West Africa, Fourah Bay College (FBC).

My school was built for the kids of professors, ministers of government, and ex-presidents. So how did I, the son of a TV repairman, get in? There was a professor who was married to a Filipina lady, the first Asian woman I ever saw. They used to come to my dad to fix their TV. So my dad said, “I will fix your TVs for a prolonged period for free. You don’t have to pay me, just get him in and he will do what I promise. He’s a good kid.” The professor said he’d give me a trial to see if I would do well. I took the test and got into the school.

Beyond kung fu films, what other early China exposure did you get?

For most Africans, especially Sierra Leoneans, it was very difficult to distinguish between, let’s say, a Korean and a Chinese. We used to have a lot of guys working in the fishing industry, but I cannot say if they were Korean or Chinese. But back then, when we saw an Asian person, we automatically thought they were Chinese. We have a huge natural harbor, so these Asian fishermen came ashore and walked around. They could have been Chinese, but I don’t know.

Beyond fishing, what else were Chinese doing in Sierra Leone?

We have one major national stadium, which hosts most of our sporting events. It was built by Chinese folks. It was dilapidated during the war, but it’s being renovated now.

What was your first significant interaction with China?

When I finished high school, we were coming out of a ten-year civil war. Things were very slow. So, I was looking for scholarships to study abroad. At that time, in the early 2000s, China was gradually coming to the fore and people suggested that it might be a good option.

In what way did the civil war affect your life?

I see people who look at war and they think they’re cheering for Team A or Team B. If you have been under gunfire for four days, if you’ve seen RPGs and mortars go off, I think you are a person for whom life is a little bit different. I was in a very tough spot when the war came to my city. It was one of the longest days of my life. It was not pretty. I saw death, I saw a ton of destruction. I grew a new perspective, which is why most things I face now don’t faze me. I’ve seen a lot worse, dealing with war up close and personal. The war ended around 2001, but the height of it was January 6. When Americans talk about January 6, I have my I have my own. That’s when the rebels came to town and let’s just say shit went south.

How did you get from the war in Sierra Leone in 2001 to China in 2004?

This was all at a time when China was on the cusp of hosting the Olympics in 2008. Economically, the country was growing very fast, and its relations with Africa were developing rapidly, too. So, beyond kung fu movies, I felt China was a country heading in the direction I felt Africa could be heading.

I just saw China as a different opportunity to kind of retool and, you know, take a different route. China was moving fast. I thought if I spoke the language I could have new doors open up for me.

I applied for a scholarship to come over here to study and I got it. In 2004, I went to the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) and did my basic Chinese courses there. Then I did a course at Tianjin University to further bolster my Chinese. Then, after some time off, I started my Bachelor’s at the University of Aeronautics in Beijing.

Did any friends, relatives, or acquaintances go to China first?

There were lots of Africans that were coming to China at that point, it was a new thing. We were at the vanguard. There was an influx. In my family, I was the first to come over to Asia. At BLCU we had Africans from Angola to Zimbabwe, and students from Vanuatu and Fiji in between. We all lived in a dorm and experienced moving from one culture to another together. You know, language, food. Nothing that I faced made me feel like it’s the end of the world. Chinese people were not used to Africans back then. People stared and made comments here and there, but I never really got flustered or bothered by it. I wouldn’t say I felt any kind of way about it. I just dealt with it and kept moving.

What was your impression of the Chinese you met?

That they were very diverse. It’s like going to any other country: you’re going to have people who think about life differently. There are people who will stare at you and maybe make comments, but there were other folks who were very nice to me and helpful when I got here. It was kind of like a balancing act. I wouldn’t put everyone in one box. I just felt that it came in different shapes and sizes. Some people were cool. Some people weren’t. That’s just the way it was.

Who was your first Chinese friend?

My language exchange partner at BLCU. She was definitely very helpful. She was the first person I got close to. We met on campus. She was very energetic and was helping me with the basics, you know, pinyin and pronunciation — bo, po, mo, fo — that kind of stuff. Chinese is so abstract you think you’re an idiot at first. Like, “Why don’t I get it?” But then, ultimately it comes together.

In Sierra Leone English is the official language and most courses are taught in English, but with my friends at school, and my family, we all spoke Krio, the broken English that harkens back to my history. When the slaves got there, they had lost a sense of their language and belonging and origin. If you go to Sierra Leone and stay a few weeks, you’d be surprised at how much you can understand.

Describe your friend group in mid-2000s Beijing.

It was a mix of everything. The university was vibrant. We had a lot of people from different countries. It was a crazy time. The Chinese students did their own thing, but we would meet occasionally when we played football [soccer] or basketball. You got to make friends through sports, but when it came to socializing and going out, it was mostly with students from different countries.

After BLCU, what came next?

I went to Tianjin and did a course there on improving my basic Chinese and learning some scientific Chinese to improve my vocabulary. Then I went to the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics for my bachelor’s in information technology in 2013. It was an international school at that time, so my classmates were other foreigners, including a handful of Africans. Once I graduated, I was thinking about working for companies like Huawei. I thought, “Now I’ve got the IT part of it, maybe I can do something that’s more business oriented.” So, for my master’s I did corporate management, more on the administration side of things. I got my master’s in 2016.

After four years, did you still view China as a land of opportunity?

That feeling came and went. When applying for jobs back then, China was mostly Eurocentric. That was and probably still is the case. Your passport, your nationality, and your skin color have a huge impact on how far you can go and what jobs you can get. I think that’s not a secret. I think everyone knows that’s how it goes. So there were times when I felt doubt, but there were positive days, too.

Did your education point you to staying in China or going home?

My mindset initially was, “Okay, you’ve learned this, you could probably take it back, but there’s so much instability in the market back home, economically.” Things were not great. Then I felt, “Now I’m here, let me try and see what I can do with what I have here.” Weighing the pros and cons was not easy. At some point, I’m going to have to do my own thing and help back home.

Tell us how you met Mike Tyson.

It’s a part of my life I will never forget. I was on the verge of applying for the Star Times job in Beijing. There was this huge buzz around town. “Mike has come in to shoot a movie.” “Steven Seagal is here.” I’m like, “Steven Seagal?!” I mean if you grew up watching kung fu movies, those are the guys right there. I’m thinking, “There’s no way in hell you’re gonna have Mike Tyson and Steven Seagal on the movie set.” That’s just unreal. It’s too good to be true. I hear about an audition and they have a bunch of roles open. You never know. See what’s going on. So I went to the audition. It was a big, big thing. “China Salesman,” that was the name of the film. I was auditioning for one role, but then they told me they were desperate for a stunt double. “You might have some resemblance. Shave your head and put on a face tattoo.” That was that. When Mike, who was not on set initially, came back to see what I had done, I felt I had done a very good job. So that’s how it came about. I got it and I was going for a very long time because that movie took a long time to shoot. I learned a lot. We shot in Beijing, and in Inner Mongolia.

Explain going from thinking about work at Huawei to sportscasting.

I had experience with broadcast TV when I was back home when I was much younger. I used to work with some radio stations as a sports commentator. I’ve always worked with cameras, so I had experience in that field already. When I was in China, I was always experimenting. I would go to auditions for TV and movie roles. When I saw that Star Times was looking for people, I went to the audition and did well. Once there, I got further training in on-screen appearances and honed my skills over time. You don’t just magically appear on TV, but I’d always been fascinated by media and journalism. It was not something I woke up to randomly. I’d had some minor exposure before.

Describe the sports commentating of your youth.

For quite a while, people in Sierra Leone knew me as the kid on the radio. We also used to call the games live, where they were played. You’re right there with a mic and you’re doing a commentary for the fans sitting in the stadium. I was just a kid and the guys I worked with were twice or three times my age. I’ve always done this, so working at Star Times was not a difficult decision. Whether it happened in China or elsewhere, I always felt it was something I was going to do again because I was always very passionate about it. I was doing this when I was like 12, 13, 14 years old. It was a natural transition. It was just something I felt I was meant to do, something I felt I had a gift for that I wanted to exploit.

When you auditioned, did you have an understanding of Star Times?

I’d never heard about Star Times, so I did a little bit of reading. I’d never heard about it because it’s mostly broadcasting back home in Africa. It’s not a thing in the mainland, like CGTN or CCTV.

How did you feel about a Chinese company broadcasting in Africa?

I felt that it was good, because I’m talking to my own people. I’m from a country where we don’t have people like me doing what I do. We’re a very small country. I saw it as me representing my country and putting my country out there. West Africa is dominated by Nigeria and Ghana, so I thought, “Go fly your green, white and blue — my national colors — represent! Give a very good impression of what your country is about. Change the views.” The whole image of Sierra Leone is Ebola, blood diamonds, and war. I wanted to change that. I felt if I’m a face on TV, and I’m from there, I could make a difference, give a different look, give a positive image of my country, myself and my family.

Before your start on Star Times in 2016, where did your family see soccer?

Different channels. One thing that’s really big in Africa now is satellite TV. If your family’s affluent, you have this small box and a dish outside. When I was growing up, that was a symbol of wealth. Not everyone had it, only a handful of houses. You got CNN, the BBC, Fox, mostly those international channels. Then, as I was growing up, Super Sports from South Africa became huge. They had all the English Premier League games Africans want to watch. It was and is massive.

Why did Africans start liking Star Times?

Because it was cheaper than Super Sports and because sometimes Star Times will provide big events like the World Cup, which is massive back home, and because we also have a lot of movie channels. Kung fu movies are still big back home.

A funny story: my friend goes to a movie theater at home to watch the World Cup in Russia. I’m hosting and he turns to whoever he’s with and says, “Yo, that’s my boy from high school.” He was like, “No way he’s not even Sierra Leonean.” I don’t sound Sierra Leonean. So this guy’s arguing with my friend and my friend called me while I’m on air. It’s happened several times. I wouldn’t say that I was the sole reason, but once people came to know, they’d say, “Oh, yeah, he’s from Sierra Leone.” I was the one who got them to start watching that channel.

Did you enjoy Star Times right away?

It was exhilarating because I was covering things I was excited about when I was a kid. Then, in a workspace over time, there are a few things, inside stuff, I probably don’t want to get into right now. There were difficult days and there still are difficult days. It’s inevitable. They have their own vision and you might see things differently. Those things happen in the workspace.

You’re calling live football from other timezones, so you’re working late nights, correct?

It’s rough. Because I’m on Saturdays I don’t get to bed until five in the morning Sunday China time. So, weekends I’m exhausted. To cover the German Soccer League, for instance, I leave my apartment and get to work around nine o’clock and then don’t get back until three-thirty or four in the morning. By the time I get to bed, it’s around five o’clock in the morning. Sunday is recovery day. It feels like you’re jet lagged.

Randall interviews Belgian footballer Thorgan Hazard after a Bundesliga match in Germany in 2019. (Photo courtesy of Lloyd Randall).

Are you working solo or do you work with another sportscaster?

I have co-hosts I work with. Sometimes it’s two people in the studio, or maybe three. It depends on if it’s a huge event, like the World Cup. I was the main host and I had two co-hosts. Occasionally we have a visitor from another channel or maybe from China Daily. Mostly it’s other foreign broadcasters.

Who were your heroes growing up?

One of my heroes when I was growing up was Mark Gleeson, a huge sportscaster from South Africa. Through this job I’m doing now I got invited to a WhatsApp group and could not believe that he was in the group. I reached out and said, “Dude, I used to listen to you.” I love that dude. His voice. Everything about him. I was just in awe. I couldn’t believe it, man. I was like, “I’m talking to a guy I used to hear on the BBC African service.” He’s the man. He was the main sports guy. Yeah, he’s the guy I want to be like, and he’s an amazing white South African dude.

How soon before you were recognized back home?

It was at the World Cup 2018 in Russia. It was big because every African loves football and the World Cup is the biggest event. It’s the Super Bowl or the NBA Playoffs. I went to Russia to do a documentary on the World Cup itself, which was translated into different languages. I was there for a month, going to the different host cities. It was sports, culture, and history fused together. So that went viral back home. People all over Africa were watching it and then when the World Cup came around, Africans were proud that one of their own was doing something on an international stage. That’s when people started becoming more aware of what I was doing.

Are your followers ever surprised that you’re speaking from China?

Star Times has divisions in some African nations, Kenya and Nigeria, for instance. Sometimes viewers get intrigued by the whole China experience. Questions come in various forms: about things in China or about the broadcast, which is mostly sports. Most of the issues I deal with are sports related. I have a show about combat sports. Young kids out there want to get into UFC and boxing, so they reach out with questions about how they can improve. Some occasionally ask about China, but not at any great depth.

Do you think Africans care if their sports and news comes from a Chinese company or Western company?

Honestly, I don’t. I grew up on CNN. Even our national channel had CNN. The only thing we had on radio was the BBC and Voice of America. I think most Africans who are sports fans — not people who have other interests but strictly those who first want to watch a game in high definition at minimal costs — they don’t care where it comes from. People in Africa live on less than $1 a day, so if they have an opportunity to pay less to watch something of a higher quality, they’re not asking if it comes from Beijing or Bratislava.

Bottom line is to get to watch the game and enjoy it. The rest is not really important. Where it comes from, who’s running it, is of no great significance. When I was growing up, I missed so many Sierra Leone games because we didn’t carry it locally. So now, if there’s an opportunity to watch your country play abroad, in a clear picture and with good sound, that’s a no-brainer. There’s a lot of other channels out there. Super Sports is massive and Sky Sports, which provides the English Premier League. If you want to really get a hold of African fans you have to show British football and Star Times doesn’t have the rights yet.

What kinds of queries do you get from Africans about China?

African traders, guys who want to go to Guangzhou and buy and sell products, clothing, or maybe hair for women, call and ask me if I can provide them with some entry. “Maybe if you pay me,” I say. They want to buy designer handbags or machinery. They get in touch with me because they know I’m here and I speak the language so they feel I could be a conduit and middleman. Most questions are about trade, unless there’s some international incident where China hits the news for good or bad reasons, then they get in touch with me on that, too, to figure out what’s true.

Where are most Africans learning their world news these days?

We all have heard about the ongoing battle for media control, a word I use carefully. Africa is now the new frontier. I don’t know anyone who watches CGTN in Sierra Leone. They get stuff from CNN and the BBC, and if they hear something about China there, or they see some clip on YouTube, they will then come to me and ask me to verify it. CNN is definitely still the most popular because it’s on every network, it’s on at the airport, wherever there’s a screen.

So if something happens internationally, they’ll definitely get it from CNN, BBC, VOA, and YouTube. There’s a lot of people on YouTube making videos. Since social media has taken over traditional media in Africa there’s also always WhatsApp groups to share information, including video clips that are sent around.

Did you ever think about working for Star Times in Africa?

I am just coming out of a long engagement to a lady back in Africa. When COVID struck and she was saying, “You’re not here, things are not working out,” I was thinking about what it might be like to work for Star Times in Nairobi or Lagos to bring me closer to her. But, at this juncture, I feel like if I want to do something different, I want to do something completely different.

If you did Star Times sportscasting would you have to work with producers back in Beijing, on China-time?

No, I think the channels that operate in Africa, especially because Nigeria is a big market, have some autonomy in what they can do, even if they get all their directions from Beijing. I’m not 100% sure though. It’s just what I’ve seen. I feel they have some autonomy.

Do you agree with critics concerned that Star Times’ partnerships with Zambia’s national broadcaster gives it too much control?

We’ve had our media space dominated by colonial powers before. I would be concerned regardless of who is dominating. I feel Africans have to know how to have their own media. The African continent is vast. What might fly in Zambia, could possibly not fly in Ghana, or maybe in Sierra Leone or Liberia. So, to put it all under one umbrella is a disservice. I don’t know much about the Zambian media space. I will say most Africans get their news of geopolitics from Western TV content. So, for example, if you want to talk about the war in Ukraine and Russia, most of what Africa has consumed is what’s been said on CNN and the BBC. That’s all they’ve got.

So, where China is concerned, it’s important to understand where Africans are coming from. For many years Western countries have launched proxy wars and assassination attempts of African leaders of reputation. I’m talking about guys like Kwame Nkrumah, for instance. So you have to understand some Africans’ distrust of anything Western, and for good reason. As the United States tries to get South Africa to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine I feel they’re not trying to understand where South Africa stands.

I cannot, I insist, speak for all Africans. No one does. It is important to understand the South African context. When this war came about, obviously, the United States was on the side of Ukraine. Washington wants more pressure on Russia sanction-wise and they want everyone to follow suit. On the flip side, the U.S. has to see that there was a point in time when Nelson Mandela, a hero of Africa, was dubbed a terrorist by the West. The West was supporting the Apartheid government while the U.S.S.R. was providing the African National Congress with weaponry. It’s hard to ask South Africans to completely forget that. Africans might think Russia is bad, but also they’re thinking, “We were in a tough spot years ago and these guys were on our side.” That’s why South Africa said, “We want to be neutral in this war. We don’t want war, we want peace.” But the West insists, “No, you must condemn.” By the same token, the U.S. is telling Africans, ”We want you guys to be independent.” Well, if we’re independent, let us speak for ourselves.

Is there a China-or-the-West choice for Africans these days?

Many of the African intellectuals I went to school with are faced with this dichotomy between the West and China. So now there’s this tussle going on in Africa for control. The way they see it, the West has done so much to Africa for decades and never really apologized, never paid any reparations, never done anything. Yet they preach to Africans about who we can associate with? That’s going to be an issue going forward. I wouldn’t say Africans love China, but some people are of the opinion that it’s very hypocritical for the West to be pontificating “You guys are free to choose your own associations.”

On the flip side, some Africans will tell you about the way Chinese conduct business, the way some African governments are indebted to the Chinese in the millions around shady construction deals. They are very concerned, saying, “Okay, we’ve had one colonial master, are we now going to have another?” There’s a diversity of opinion.