On March 17, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) declared Morocco the winners of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). It controversially overturned Senegal’s victory secured against Morocco in Rabat on January 18. 

The decision by the CAF Appeal Board is ridiculous and raises suspicions of possible bribery. The statement by the CAF President Patrice Motsepe on January 19 defending the decision was weak, horrendous, and incoherent. His face illustrated an obvious lack of confidence in the contents of his brief, unceremonious speech. 

Typically, football results are pegged on the final decision by the referee on the pitch. The Appeal Board cites Senegal’s abandoning of the match just before stoppage time for 15 minutes after the referee controversially awarded Morocco a penalty. There were also unsporting dramatic episodes during the match, with Moroccan players petulantly running after the glove towel of Senegal’s goalkeeper. CAF ultimately imposed hefty fines on each team weeks ago. 

These incidents highlight the problem of football and sports in general in Africa: weak institutions. This reflects the African governance challenge, where meritocracy, integrity, and hard work are frowned upon by those in power. 

Think of the appeal decision and the entire match-related processes as similar to electoral processes in Africa, and consider that most African countries abhor foolproof systems. First, the activities on the pitch were influenced by the emotions of the Moroccan fans and, by extension, the Moroccan football authorities. Childish, bizarre behaviour by Moroccan players and unorthodox decisions by the referee. Morocco behaved like the typical African heads of state and governments and their sycophants who are sore losers and always seek to influence the election results.

Second, the CAF Appeal Board mirrors the electoral appellate bodies in Africa, which go by different names and levels depending on a country’s constitution. These could be electoral commissions, supreme courts, courts of appeal, high courts, or supreme councils. The name does not matter. These entities in Africa have normalised making rulings that resonate with those in power. The circumstances under which the Appeal Board ruled in favour of Morocco fell short of the prescribed CAF statutes threshold. But this did not matter. 

Back home in Kenya, I stopped going to the stadium to watch football matches whose results are predetermined. Match officials, players, officials from the Football Kenya Federation (FKF), and opportunistic individuals collude to fix matches. Match-fixing is not a reserve of African football. It occurs in other parts of the world, but there is a serious lack of effort to eliminate this vice in Africa. 

There is a former Kenyan goalkeeper who is currently facing prosecution over match-fixing suspicion. Before he was finally caught speaking to a match-fixer in a viral video, I was not convinced with his posture between the sticks and his dramatised jumps and failed saves letting in cheap goals which a well-stitched scarecrow would save! 

It is agonising paying for match tickets and watching compromised games. The standards of the Kenya Premier League have fallen so badly because of the lack of belief in the sanctity of institutions. 

Currently, there are concerns about the lack of readiness by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, especially Kenya, to host the joint AFCON tournament in 2027. Recently, the Sports Principal Secretary Elijah Mwangi cautioned that Kenya risks losing the opportunity to host the tournament if it fails to pay the KES 3.9 billion hosting fee. Tanzania and Uganda have paid it. 

There are also concerns about delayed repairs at the Kasarani International Stadium and Nyayo National Stadium. Apparently, the Kasarani Stadium contractor is owed KES 3.7 billion and has reduced the workforce, with the completion deadline in six months. At Nyayo, the contractor is owed KES 2.6 billion and has vacated the site.

But there are spirited defences by the Ruto-led regime and its acolytes to carelessly marvel at the so-called infrastructural beauty that the Raila Odinga International Stadium (formerly Talanta Stadium) is. Last month, the Auditor General revealed that KES 11 billion for the stadium’s construction cannot be accounted for. The stadium’s initial value was KES 44.5 billion, but its expenses have exceeded that by the amount questioned by the Auditor General. Also, bear in mind that Kenyan taxpayers are expected to pay over KES 100 billion in interest for 15 years for the stadium. 

CAF and most African football bodies are despicable institutions. And one wonders why European football is way more popular than local football. Why support that which is doomed and purposely designed to fail? The starry-eyed and inconsequential ‘pan-Africanists’ may find my stance uncomfortable and Eurocentric. No apologies, anyway. 

The debate on the limited support for African football and massive fanaticism for European football should not be reduced to colonialist and anti-colonialist perspectives. Human beings respond to incentives and disincentives. And such responses are strong in this era of a highly globalised world. 

Two interesting football-related books lie pretty in my library: How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer and Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. Kuper writes interesting football articles for the Financial Times.  

Chapter 7 of Foer’s book is titled “How Soccer Explains the New Oligarchs.” Before it, Chapter 5 is “How Soccer Explains the Survival of Top Hats.” While these two chapters are limited in examples and references to African football, their explanations resonate with African football.

In Chapter 5, Foer narrates the failure of foreign investment to turn around the big Brazilian clubs of Corinthians and Flamengo in the 1990s due to systemic corruption. The great Pelé then was the president of the Brazilian football federation. He proposed and enacted progressive measures requiring football clubs to operate as transparent capitalist ventures. However, these measures were sneered at by the heads of the football clubs. Foreign investment found its way out of Brazil. 

Foer goes ahead to offer a damning explanation of Pele’s boundaries to no longer forgive his corrupt allies in the country’s football system. He states: “It’s not far from the sociologist Edward Banfield’s famous 1958 study of corruption, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Banfield explained that it’s the most familial-based societies, where the sense of obligation is strongest, that breed the worst nepotism and cronyism.” This highlights the failures of the African football institutions. 

In Chapter 7, Foer gives hilarious accounts about the fancy, monied owners of Italian football clubs. This trend is replicated in other parts of the world, including Africa. The point of departure between Africa and the rest of the world is that in the former, most of the owners disregard the relevance of strong football institutions. There is a former squeaky-voiced and disgraced head of FKF who personifies this unholy institutional wickedness. 

Soccernomics presents riveting insights and conclusions about football in the developing world, including Africa. Kuper and Szymanski argue that wealth and well-being are significant indicators of a country’s sporting success. Of course, there are outliers to every statistical analysis. In Africa, football authorities view the game more as a pastime adventure than a commercial opportunity. It could be because of African economic conditions, but this is not an excuse for the oligarchs in charge of football to enrich themselves. The authors make a harsh conclusion: “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.”  Organisation refers to credible, competent institutions.

There is another bold observation by Kuper and Szymanski: “To win at sports, you need to find, develop, and nurture talent. Doing that requires money, know-how, and some kind of administrative infrastructure. Few African countries have enough of any.”  This is factually correct! This is not confined to football. Many sporting disciplines in most African countries are enduring these challenges.

Sports are geopolitically vital events. These are soft power projection avenues. African countries are generally laid-back geopolitically, often waiting for the rest of the world to set the pace. Probably it makes sense not to have high expectations with African countries still struggling with the basics of good governance. 

I will spare my energy and time to fervently watch and cheer non-African sports, for to passionately dedicate effort towards African sports is among the 1,000 ways to die. I repeat: I am no pan-African whatsoever!

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