I am curious to know Franklin Foer’s opinion about the recent worldwide celebrations by Arsenal’s passionate fans following the club’s victory in the English Premier League (EPL). Foer is the author of How Soccer Explains the World, one of the most intriguing books linking football to socioeconomic, political, and cultural issues. I am sceptical whether Foer would endorse the recent criticism towards Arsenal fans, especially in Africa.

The vanguards of anti-neocolonialism and quasi-Pan-Africanists declared Arsenal fans’ celebrations a neocolonial capture by powerful forces. The critics in Kenya even went so far as to shamelessly opine that Arsenal fans should have directed their energy toward protesting the administration of President William Ruto. But such is the nature of self-appointed moral chiefs on Kenyan social media: too angry, cynically vile, and exhaustively virulent to be worth any meaningful debate.

Don’t get me wrong. Neocolonialism remains a threat to Africa’s prosperity. However, Africa’s prosperity lies in the hands of the African political leadership. It is important to acknowledge Africa’s atrocities in the wake of the skewed relations with foreign powers. But it is also critical to understand that in this era of heightened geopolitical competition in Africa, Africa’s political leadership has multiple choices to reject obnoxious policies pushed by foreign powers.

Besides the demand for anti-government protests, the pseudo-Pan-Africanists urged fans of European football clubs to unconditionally support local football teams. Two things at this juncture. First, huge crowds of the supporters of Gor Mahia FC turned out to rally in the streets of Nairobi over the weekend when the club won the Kenyan Premier League (KPL). I am yet to hear from the anti-neocolonial brigade. I am sure they rarely keep up with the KPL.

Second, it is human nature to respond to highly rewarding and satisfying engagements or events. This simply means that incentives play a bigger role in the fanatical support of European football clubs than the local ones. What is more rewarding between supporting European and local football teams? Certainly, the odds are strongly in favour of European football clubs.

Globalisation has enhanced the transmission of such highly emotionally satisfying events like football matches. People elastically respond to incentives more so in a highly globalised world. Incentives go in line with the utility derived from well-structured events: proper structures increase the probability of high emotional satisfaction, and vice versa. You cannot really police people’s tastes, preferences, and lives and their pursuit of deriving the highest utility level from their interests.

Recently, I wrote an article expressing my frustrations with supporting African football. This was after the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Appeal Board ridiculously stripped Senegal of the 2025 AFCON victory and awarded Morocco. I also pointed out the prevalence of match-fixing incidents, especially in the KPL. There are no strong incentives currently that will elevate Kenyan football to the next level.

On April 24, 2026, nine out of 14 National Executive Committee members of the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) voted to force chair Hussein Mohammed and two others to step aside due to financial mismanagement. FIFA rejected the suspension. Most Kenyan football clubs have weak structures and lack professional management. These issues cannot attract meaningful, long-term investments in the game. Perhaps it is a challenge affecting many developing countries and thus has minimal commercial interest by potential investors.

Financial power is the leading factor that determines the popularity and competitiveness of a football league. This goes beyond football and affects other sporting disciplines. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski in Soccernomics highlight an efficiency table for sports, which indicates that wealth is a significant contributor to national sporting success. While this index or model is subject to criticism, Kuper and Szymanski convincingly correlate it to the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) and a country’s wealth status. The HDI measures progress on life expectancy, education, health, and living standards, and it is much more reliable than other economic measures, especially the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National Product (GNP).

The Soccernomics authors demonstrate a positive relationship between a country’s sporting success and its wealth and well-being. This means that wealthier/richer countries with high HDI levels are highly likely to do well in sports, and vice versa. Kuper and Szymanski are pessimistic, and I share communion in this statement of grand pessimism: “People all over the world might want to play sports, but to make that possible requires money and organization that poor countries don’t have.” This is where the incentives and disincentives lie. Support for European football clubs and foreign teams in general is only guaranteed to grow much stronger in Kenya and across Africa.

Weak financial power begets weak global influence. Strong financial power enhances stronger global influence. The EPL surpasses the popularity of other European football leagues in the world, thanks to lucrative investment by international brands and global premium marketing. And this goes back to the 1990s, with dedicated broadcasting when other European leagues and local African leagues barely invested in meaningful football infrastructure, including marketing. In Africa, South African media giant MultiChoice (DStv/SuperSport) has held the EPL’s broadcast rights on the continent since 1992. Local football-watching centres gained popularity by broadcasting the EPL and attracted high viewership when local football leagues were collapsing due to poor management and inadequate financial resources.

Incentives dictate decisions. Strong incentives lead to high rewards. Weak incentives are associated with low rewards. Globalism rewards financially stronger entities offering highly rewarding incentives. Anti-neocolonial prophets and crusaders can have their say on the EPL’s popularity in Africa, but their deaths are much more certain than the support of local football clubs surpassing that of the English ones.

The writer, Sitati Wasilwa, writes and speaks on geopolitical and governance issues.