Knowledge bank: UN Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace, Adolf Ogi, speaks at Play the Game's conference about UN and the year 2005, which is the International Year of Sport and Physical Education.

The development of sport does not flow in one single direction from developed to developing nations.

On its first day, the Play the Game communication conference on sport and society received a major boost in the form of a message of support from United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Knowledge bank: The International Business Leaders Forum’s policy paper, ‘Shared Goals: Sport and Business in Partnerships for Development” is produced in partnership with UK Sport’s Worldwide Impact programme and puts the case for business and development organisations to come together through sport, to meet their shared objectives.

Knowledge bank: Technology serves many functions in sport. It has a constituent function. Without ball and bats, there is no baseball. Without the bike, bicycling races are impossible.

Despite the profile that it engenders for a nation as well as a myriad of benefits, sport remains a low priority in the budgets of most of the worlds developing nations. But, argues William Glenwright, sport is an integral and necessary component of an overall aid program geared essentially towards the alleviation of poverty.

The Norwegian professor, Hans B. Skaset, identifies 11 trends in the development of sport and predicts that in the future sport will be privatised, disengaged from its values and anti-doping has been made obsolete by gene technology.

The association and identification of politicians and governments with sport has been evident since sport began. The supposed benefits are legion.