The World Cup was never designed to be easy for Africa. This one is harder than usual.
So many supporters are facing suspicion before they even reach the airport — 24 of Africa’s 54 countries are banned from getting new visas. Tickets are priced in dollars at levels too high even for people not from countries in the Global South. Hotels are priced for panic and flights are priced as if football fans were only those sunning themselves at a luxury resort.
And yet, on the pitch, Africa has arrived to sink its teeth into the beautiful game. Not in one neat heroic line, though. South Africa began by losing to Mexico and gaining two red cards in the process. Tunisia were taken apart by Sweden. Senegal, still one of Africa’s strongest teams, lost 3-1 to France but played well. Algeria drew with Argentina — except for Messi, who scored every goal in a 3-0 hat trick.
So no, this is not one of those dishonest continental victory speeches where every defeat is turned into poetry and every missed chance becomes proof of destiny. But look more closely and something is happening.
Morocco drew with Brazil. Côte d’Ivoire beat Ecuador. Egypt drew with Belgium. The DRC drew with Portugal! Ghana beat Panama. And of course there’s Cape Verde, the tiny Atlantic island nation playing in its first World Cup, which held Spain to a goalless draw on the shoulders of its 40-year-old goalie.
Already the pattern is clear: African teams are not here as decoration. They are here to play. This may yet become Africa’s best World Cup. That is not only sentimental hope. For the first time, Africa has ten teams at the tournament. The expanded 48-team format has changed the math. More African countries have a stage. More teams can survive the group phase.
For decades, Africa arrived at World Cups carrying too much symbolic weight and too few places. The continent was expected to provide colour, noise, athleticism, romance and “potential” and maybe one team to reach the knockout stage.
Cape Verde’s draw with Spain is one of the defining early images of this tournament. Not because Cape Verde suddenly became Spain. Spain remain one of the great football machines: technically polished, structurally disciplined and used to possession. But because scrappiness and teamwork held tight against flash and glamour.
Cape Verde arrived as a story before it arrived as a team. A charming underdog. The kind of opponent that allows journalists like me to write about population size, diasporas and national pride before turning back to the real business of analysing the favourite.
But Cape Verde did something more interesting than charm the world. They held Spain scoreless. They did not arrive merely to be admired for having arrived. They came to compete. They made Spain play the match rather than simply occupy the occasion.
The African story at this World Cup is not about miracles. It is about maturity. Morocco’s draw with Brazil was not an accident that came from nowhere; it belongs to the confidence built by a country that reached the semifinal in 2022 and taught the world that African football need not apologise for its ambition.
Côte d’Ivoire’s win over Ecuador was not a fairy tale; it was a reminder that African champions do not stop being dangerous because European pundits are too lazy to follow them properly. Africa is not begging to be included in the story anymore. It is writing it.
The World Cup claims to unite the world, yet much of the world is being filtered, priced out or kept at a distance. Fans from Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire have faced travel bans. Other African supporters have had to navigate visa uncertainty, weak currencies, long-haul flights, inflated accommodation and ticket prices that make the “world’s game” feel like a gated community.
It’s not just Africa. Thirty-nine countries worldwide are banned, with “only” half being African. Iran is only allowed in the United States on game days, having to return to Mexico as soon as the match is done. That is the contradiction sitting beneath the spectacle. African football is more present than ever. African supporters are more absent.
The tournament wants African rhythm, shirts, flags and television audiences. It wants to sell African stories. But when actual African bodies want to cross borders and sit in actual stadiums, suddenly the welcome becomes complicated.
This is a bald reflection of the effects of capitalism on the Global South in general. The rich travel easily. The poor struggle for visa appointments. The World Cup says the world is invited. The prices whisper: “Not you, buddy.”
That would be offensive enough if Africa were merely watching from the margins. But Africa is not on the margins anymore. The old patronising language no longer works. You cannot call Morocco’s World Cup run in 2022 a fluke and then watch them stand up to Brazil as they did. You cannot ignore Côte d’Ivoire when they beat a strong South American side. You cannot reduce Egypt, who held Belgium to a single point, to its pyramids and the Sphinx. You cannot call Cape Verde a cute story.
You cannot keep pretending that African football is emerging. It has emerged.
The football economy still tends to see Africa as a source of raw material. Young talent is found, extracted, refined elsewhere and sold back to the world under European branding.
African players become Premier League players, Ligue 1 players, Serie A players, Bundesliga players and Champions League players. Their African origins are celebrated when convenient and forgotten during serious analysis.
But national-team football reminds us that a footballer is not only a market asset. He or she is also someone’s son or daughter. Africa is authentic.
Cape Verde is a great example. The third-smallest country ever to play in this tournament in its nearly 100-year history, the Blue Sharks are a national side built from a scattered nation.
Cape Verde itself has fewer than 600 000 people but its diaspora is commonly estimated to be double that size. The team reflects that reality. It is not a squad drawn from one domestic league or one neat national pipeline. It is a network: players born in Portugal, the Netherlands and Ireland answering the call of a tiny country.
That is Africa in general. Dispersed. Underestimated. Improvising. Connecting what is scattered into a broad sense of loyalty.
There is a lesson there for African football but also for African business, culture and politics. We spend so much time mourning the diaspora as loss. Skills leave. Families divide. The continent trains people whom the world then hires. But diaspora can also be a second national infrastructure if it is cultivated rather than mourned. It can be a recruitment system, a knowledge network, a funding base and a cultural amplifier.
And perhaps that is why the idea of “Africa coming in force” matters so much. It does not only mean ten teams. It means ten different arguments against smallness. Of course, football can humiliate anyone. That is part of its cruelty. A team can look like destiny on Monday and collapse on Friday. A goalkeeper can become a hero in one match and an embarrassing meme in the next.
So let us not crown Africa too early. But let us also not miss what is happening.
The continent is no longer waiting politely for football history to include it. It is not here to add drums to the soundtrack or flags to the montage. It is not here to be charming, grateful, colourful or promising. It is here with champions. We even have two of this year’s AFCON champions, the original winner and the forfeited one. But that’s another column.
The overall story of Africa may become the story of this World Cup. A tournament staged in one of the richest parts of the world, while much of the world watches from outside the stadium economy. And still, somehow, Africa is coming through. Not perfectly. Not politely. But with force.
Michael Brian Lee is the Mail & Guardian’s US correspondent, currently based in New York.