“Blacks are tired of stand­ing at the touch­lines to wit­ness a game that they should be play­ing. They want to do things for them­selves and all by them­selves.”

—Steve Biko

(1946-1977, South African an­ti-apartheid ac­tivist and founder of the Black Con­scious­ness Move­ment)

We are taught to un­der­val­ue, even ridicule any­thing African or black. His­tor­i­cal­ly, African and African Di­as­po­ra peo­ples, cul­tures, prod­ucts, and achieve­ments have been un­der­val­ued, min­imised and over­looked—even by our­selves. “An­ti-black­ness”, con­scious, sub­con­scious and un­con­scious, has been with us for at least five hun­dred years. It is root­ed in colo­nial­ism, racism, and West­ern cul­tur­al bias. Or­gan­ised po­lit­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tu­al and cul­tur­al re­sis­tance by Africans and the Di­as­po­ra against Eu­ro­pean sub­ju­ga­tion and racism have al­ways sim­mered but tru­ly ex­plod­ed across the globe in the 1920s and 1930s.

The 1917 Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion ex­ert­ed a pro­found in­flu­ence on an­ti-colo­nial thinkers and fight­ers across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. It in­fused and en­er­gised the phi­los­o­phy of Black Con­scious­ness on the Moth­er Con­ti­nent and in the Amer­i­c­as, fu­elling in­tel­lec­tu­al, po­lit­i­cal and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty re­sis­tance move­ments.

In the Unit­ed States the Harlem Re­nais­sance—an in­tel­lec­tu­al and cul­tur­al move­ment of African-Amer­i­can mu­sic, dance, art, fash­ion, lit­er­a­ture, the­atre and pol­i­tics that in­clud­ed Ja­maican writer Claude McK­ay—blos­somed as part of the gen­er­al strug­gle for black hu­man and civ­il rights. In the Caribbean Mar­cus Gar­vey found­ed the Uni­ver­sal Ne­gro Im­prove­ment As­so­ci­a­tion in Ja­maica (1914) to work for the ad­vance­ment of peo­ple of African an­ces­try around the world. Hun­dreds of thou­sands ral­lied to its slo­gan “Africa for the Africans, at home and abroad!”

In the French-speak­ing world the Négri­tude move­ment, a cul­tur­al and lit­er­ary move­ment, emerged among African and Caribbean writ­ers in Paris, aimed at cel­e­brat­ing black iden­ti­ty and op­pos­ing colo­nial­ism. Key fig­ures in­clud­ed Aimé Cé­saire (Mar­tinique), Léopold Sen­g­hor (Sene­gal) and Léon-Gontran Damas (French Guiana), who sought to re­claim African her­itage and pro­mote pride in black cul­ture.

FREE­DOM DAY: 1950s

By the 1950s an­ti-colo­nial fer­ment in post-World War 2 Africa her­ald­ed the demise of Eu­ro­pean colo­nial­ism on the con­ti­nent. Na­tion­al­ist po­lit­i­cal move­ments or­gan­ised to con­sign the old colo­nial or­der to the dust­bin of his­to­ry. The phi­los­o­phy of Pan-African­ism was cen­tral to this.

Dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972, Prime Min­is­ter of the Gold Coast from 1952 to 1957 when it gained in­de­pen­dence from Britain, and Pres­i­dent of Ghana, from 1957 to 1966) or­ga­nized a se­ries of Pan-African con­gress­es in Ac­cra, aimed at em­pow­er­ing oth­er African na­tion­al­ist lead­ers to over­throw the colo­nial yoke.

Trinida­di­an George Pad­more (1903–1959, born Mal­colm Nurse in Arou­ca and a lead­ing the­o­reti­cian of glob­al Pan-African­ism) was Nkrumah’s key ad­vi­sor.

Im­por­tant­ly, Nkrumah loved foot­ball. And he saw in it a ready weapon for the ar­se­nal of Pan-African­ism, a pow­er­ful tool for chal­leng­ing the colo­nial or­der and for na­tion-build­ing. He used the sport to fos­ter in­ter­nal uni­ty, build na­tion­al pride, and pro­mote his vi­sion of a “Unit­ed States of Africa,” in­vest­ing in in­fra­struc­ture and us­ing his coun­try’s na­tion­al team, the Black Stars, to show­case African tal­ent.

Nkrumah is cred­it­ed with sup­port­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the African Clubs Cham­pi­onship. He do­nat­ed funds for the tour­na­ment, which lat­er evolved in­to the African Cham­pi­ons League. This leads us to the Africa Cup of Na­tions.

North Africa, then a more au­tonomous re­gion than the rest of the con­ti­nent, was first to join FI­FA, through Egypt in 1923. The Con­fed­er­a­tion of African Foot­ball (CAF) was ac­cept­ed as a zone of FI­FA in 1954 against the wish­es of Asia and Ar­genti­na but with the sup­port of the four British Home Na­tions and the coun­tries of the com­mu­nist East­ern Bloc. Amidst the febrile an­ti-colo­nial­ism of the day CAF was by de­f­i­n­i­tion a Pan-African­ist in­sti­tu­tion, cre­at­ed to ad­vance the in­ter­ests of Africa in world foot­ball.

The African Na­tions Cup be­gan in 1957, years be­fore its Eu­ro­pean equiv­a­lent, which was in­au­gu­rat­ed in1960. That tour­na­ment was re­placed by the Africa Cup of Na­tions (AF­CON) in 2009. No­tably, CAF al­so pre­ced­ed its po­lit­i­cal coun­ter­part, the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of African Uni­ty (1963-2002), which was cre­at­ed to fight colo­nial­ism and pro­mote African po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion.

CAF re­cent­ly achieved its most ex­ten­sive and lu­cra­tive pen­e­tra­tion of Eu­rope for the Cup of Na­tions, which is tra­di­tion­al­ly un­der­val­ued like all things African, con­clud­ing 20 sep­a­rate me­dia rights agree­ments cov­er­ing more than 30 ter­ri­to­ries. The tour­na­ment, for the first time, is now avail­able to mil­lions of view­ers across Eu­rope. The mag­ni­tude of this break­through sig­nals a quan­ti­ta­tive leap for­ward in CAF’s strat­e­gy to po­si­tion African foot­ball as a valu­able part of the main­stream glob­al foot­ball cal­en­dar rather than a niche prod­uct, and is a mea­sure of the tour­na­ment’s and African foot­ball’s bur­geon­ing glob­al im­por­tance.

This de­vel­op­ment al­lows an in­crease in prize mon­ey, with the 2025 cham­pi­on earn­ing ten mil­lion dol­lars. By com­par­i­son, the win­ner of Con­ca­caf’s Gold Cup earns one mil­lion. Im­me­di­ate­ly pri­or to the on­go­ing 2025 tour­na­ment CAF an­nounced a change to a qua­dren­ni­al tour­na­ment cy­cle start­ing af­ter the 2028 edi­tion, mov­ing away from its tra­di­tion­al bi­en­ni­al sched­ule. This change makes good com­mer­cial sense, fa­cil­i­tates ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al cal­en­dar and brings AF­CON in­to line with the con­ti­nen­tal cham­pi­onships of Asia, Eu­rope and South Amer­i­ca. On­ly Con­ca­caf’s Gold Cup now re­mains a bi­en­ni­al tour­na­ment

AF­CON MO­ROC­CO 2025

At AF­CON 2025 sev­er­al hun­dred African play­ers from Eu­ro­pean leagues are par­tic­i­pat­ing, the largest num­ber from Nige­ria fol­lowed by the Fran­coph­o­ne West Africans of Camer­oun and Cote d’Ivoire. Al­most 30 per cent of the play­ers com­pet­ing in Mo­roc­co were born out­side the con­ti­nent, re­flect­ing the grow­ing re­liance of many African coun­tries on play­ers from the di­as­po­ra in Eu­rope.

To his cred­it, David Moyes of Ever­ton FC sup­port­ed AF­CON stat­ing, “We have to re­spect com­plete­ly the Africa Cup of Na­tions. The play­ers will go to play in the tour­na­ment for their coun­tries and right­ly so. The AF­CON is more than just a tour­na­ment ... it’s pride, iden­ti­ty, pas­sion and lega­cy. When Africa calls, you an­swer.”

Still, Eu­ro­pean club coach­es are tra­di­tion­al­ly scep­ti­cal about AF­CON and de­cry its im­pact on UE­FA club com­pe­ti­tions. In a con­ces­sion to these coach­es FI­FA de­layed the re­lease of play­ers to AF­CON 2025 by one week. In a point­ed re­sponse, Mali’s head coach, Bel­gian Tom Saint­fi­et (once of TTFA) com­ment­ed, “The prob­lem is that FI­FA’s tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, Ar­sène Wenger, knows noth­ing about in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. Apart from two sea­sons in Japan, he has on­ly worked with top Eu­ro­pean clubs, Ar­se­nal and Mona­co. And that’s what he’s do­ing now—work­ing for the big clubs, not for na­tion­al teams.”

He went fur­ther, de­nounc­ing the way non-Eu­ro­pean con­ti­nents are treat­ed, say­ing, “There is no re­spect for foot­ball in Africa, Asia, Ocea­nia, Con­ca­caf ... For FI­FA, the cen­tre of foot­ball is Eu­rope and that’s all that mat­ters. The mon­ey from Eu­ro­pean clubs is all that mat­ters.”

Eu­ro­pean clubs should not com­plain about the claim of Africa on its play­ers. Foot­ball was in­tro­duced in­to Africa in the 1860s by Eu­ro­pean ex­pa­tri­ates. Since the ar­rival of in­de­pen­dence, be­gin­ning in the 1950s, African foot­ball has been de­vel­oped by neo­colo­nial, prof­it seek­ing el­e­ments as a lode of black tal­ent—an ap­pendage of Eu­ro­pean foot­ball to be mined for ex­port like the con­ti­nent’s min­er­al re­sources.

This con­tin­ues to­day via lo­cal acad­e­mies con­nect­ed to tal­ent trawl­ing Eu­ro­pean clubs, which re­cruit African play­ers know­ing their po­ten­tial or ac­tu­al sta­tus as in­ter­na­tion­als, the tim­ing of AF­CON and the re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of play­ers be­ing called away to rep­re­sent their coun­tries. But out of this ex­ploita­tive process has emerged the mod­ern African play­er and a con­ti­nen­tal cham­pi­onship that is con­stant­ly in­creas­ing in glob­al stature and com­mer­cial val­ue.

GUID­ING VI­SION

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, while African play­ers have gained ath­let­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty and ac­cep­tance across the globe, racism against them as hu­mans en­dures and African foot­ball re­mains in the throes of a strug­gle for glob­al equal­i­ty. CAF of­fi­cial­dom may be rid­dled with cor­rup­tion, par for glob­al foot­ball, but what is un­fold­ing in Mo­roc­co is an ex­cel­lent ad­ver­tise­ment for African foot­ball. And it is af­fir­ma­tion that Africa can or­gan­ise it­self and present a se­ri­ous face to the world in the long march to­ward equal sta­tus and stature.

The great Pan-African vi­sion­ary and hu­man­ist Kwame Nkrumah once wrote, “I be­lieve strong­ly and sin­cere­ly that with the deep-root­ed wis­dom and dig­ni­ty, the in­nate re­spect for hu­man lives, the in­tense hu­man­i­ty that is our her­itage, the African race, unit­ed un­der one fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, will emerge not as just an­oth­er world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength, but as a Great Pow­er whose great­ness is in­de­struc­tible be­cause it is built not on fear, en­vy and sus­pi­cion, nor won at the ex­pense of oth­ers, but found­ed on hope, trust, friend­ship and di­rect­ed to the good of all mankind.”

That vi­sion of African great­ness is alive in AF­CON Mo­roc­co 2025.

Check it out.