For a top-rate salary of US$1,000 a month, Kenyan and other African athletes are being shopped around the world's wealthiest track and field nations in a market that one leading administrator said yesterday was “like trading slaves”.

“It is exploitation,” Isaiah Kiplagat, the president of the Kenyan athletics federation, said. “It is happening with children as young as 15. Young people who aren't qualified to represent themselves are being deceived into changing nationality for a few shillings.”

Qatar is the main destination and the best buyer. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have also bought up foreign athletes, but athletes' managers approach Europe, too.

José María Odriozola, the president of the Spanish federation, said that he is contacted five or six times a year by agents representing foreign athletes and offering them as potential Spaniards. He said that last year he even had Olusoji Fasuba, the Nigerian who won the 60 metres gold at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia last month, phone him and offer to switch vests and run for Spain.

Alarm bells over the trade in Kenyan distance runners rang loudest at the World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh last month, when Qatar, a Middle East nation with a population of less than a million and negligible history in distance running, finished third in the men's team event.

It requires nine men to fill a senior cross-country team and although all but one of the Qatar team had Arabic names, according to one European coach “they all looked like Kenyans, they ran like Kenyans and they told you they were Kenyans, too”. What the Qatar team in Edinburgh exposed was the crude exploitation of the rules for athletes to change nationality. These rules were tightened after the World Championships in Paris in 2003, when Stephen Cherono, a Kenyan, won the 3,000 metres steeplechase having changed his name to Saif Saaeed Shaheen and switched nationality to compete for Qatar.

Cherono was deeply unpopular with his fellow Kenyans, although his reported salary - $1,000 a month for the rest of his life, plus significant performance bonuses and endorsements - is more than most of his peers could dream of.

The tightening of the rules by the IAAF, the sport's world governing body, however, merely forced the Qataris to switch from buying established stars to headhunting the most promising juniors. “People are going to Africa and buying young athletes,” Odriozola said. “They go to Kenya and they watch the races and then they make their offers. The selling itself is not big business, but for the managers, if their athletes go on to be successful, they then take 10 to 20 per cent of their incomes. For me, this is immoral. It is like trading slaves.

“In middle and long-distance, there are now at least 20 to 30 Kenyans or Ethiopians who are running at the top level under different flags. In Edinburgh, everyone was saying ‘the Africans are winning everything' but forgetting that Qatar is not Africa.”

Many of these juniors are not even obliged to move to reside in their adoptive country. They are offered a fraction of the salary of Shaheen, but their package will include a coach, physiotherapy and foreign training camps.

The other carrot is in improving their chances of breaking into the elite. As Kenyans, the talent pool is vast and the competition great and only three can be selected for each Olympic event; as Qataris, their competition is from their fellow imports.

For Kiplagat, the concern is not so much losing home-grown talent, it is the welfare of those teenagers who are obliged to move abroad. “We are not worried about the numbers or competing against our countrymen,” he said. “It is that we feel we owe these athletes a moral responsibility. Most of them are 16 or 17 and a lot of them suffer. If they do not make it or they get injured, they get put into the military.”

These issues were the focus of the IAAF Council at its meeting in London last week and a working party has been formed to explore a reworking of the rules. The trade of international sporting talent is no new phenomenon: Qatar reportedly paid $1million to the Bulgarian weightlifting federation for eight athletes in 1999. What is new is the sheer numbers of Africans suddenly competing at the top level for foreign flags and the age at which they are being talent-spotted. The challenge for the IAAF working group lies in deciding to what extent it wants to limit the earning possibilities for African talent abroad.

A case in point is Maryam Yusuf Jamal, who was an Ethiopian by the name of Zenebech Tola when claiming political asylum in Switzerland in 2004. On failing to gain Swiss citizenship, though, she accepted a change of name and a Bahrainian passport and last year, in Bahrain colours, became the world 1,500 metres champion. And yet she lives and trains in Lausanne.

For those with eyes on the London 2012 Olympic Games, there is surely the temptation to follow the route of “if you can't beat 'em, join 'em”. If British sport is funding handball, for instance, to the tune of £1million a year with next to no chance of a 2012 medal, why not bring in ten young Kenyans instead?

The answer, according to Alan Storey, the senior performance manager for endurance at UK Athletics (UKA), is a) “there is no policy to recruit” b) “in the Gulf, the passport process is so quick; in the UK, it seems to take years” and c) “Qataris pay large sums. I don't see that being available in the UK. Our best prospect is lottery funding.”

That is not to say that UKA does not have Africans in the pipeline. One target is Moumin Geele, rated by many as the best distance runner in Europe. Geele is viewed as a prospect for 2012; it would not matter if he was a prospect for 2008, too, because he is still awaiting his passport.

Azerbaijan add more Asians

The Azerbaijan women's hockey team, who caused outrage at the European Championships last summer when they had six South Koreans in their squad, appear to have added more Asians to the squad taking part in the Olympic qualifying tournament in Baku, starting on Saturday. A tournament official said: “They're [Asians] not breaking any rules because they have Azerbaijan passports and residency.” The winners qualify for the Beijing Olympic Games.