Sean Jacobs's Blog

In Chad, domestic labor between Chinese employers and local workers unfolds in private spaces where rules are missing and conflict fills the gap.Sunset in N���Djamena. Image �� Aidan Huang.

All names and identifying details in this article have been anonymized.

The argument in the kitchen cut through the house and interrupted my writing. I was living in N���Djamena to conduct research and renting a room in the house of a Chinese businessman. When I went to see what was happening, Abakar, the Chadian cook told me he had been accused of stealing meat that he had been instructed to throw away the day before.

What appeared, at first glance, as a personal dispute over food was in fact one instance of a much broader and highly contested issue: the everyday employment relationships between Chinese employers and local workers in African contexts, particularly when those relationships unfold in private and poorly regulated spaces.

Debates over Chinese enterprises in Africa have long focused on wages, infrastructure, and geopolitics. Far less visible, yet equally consequential, are employment relationships that take place inside private homes rather than factories or construction sites. Cooks, guards, cleaners, and other household workers often fall into non-formal or semi-formal categories of labor, governed less by written contracts than by personal authority. In Chad, this invisibility has become more pronounced with the reinforcement of localization requirements under national labor and sectoral regulations, including the Labor Code (Code du Travail du Tchad) and localization provisions linked to the petroleum and extractive industries. While these measures increase reliance on national labor, they leave domestic and household employment largely outside effective oversight. As a result, conflicts over responsibility, trust, and discipline are rarely mediated through institutions and are instead managed through personal judgment.

Abakar���s situation reflected this dynamic clearly. There was no defined system for managing food supplies, no agreed boundary between waste and use, and no written description of his responsibilities. Accusations of theft extended beyond meat to eggs and peanuts, reinforcing a generalized suspicion that local workers were inclined to take advantage of their employers. This suspicion did not emerge in isolation. It was actively reinforced by other Chinese businessmen, who warned against becoming ���too soft��� and advised constant vigilance. In response, managerial control replaced clarity. Cooking tasks were combined with cleaning duties, and mistakes were interpreted as moral failings rather than organizational ambiguity.

After months of accumulated tension, Abakar abruptly resigned for his dignity. On the day he left, the conflict escalated sharply, and the dispute was eventually taken to the police. From the outside, this reaction appeared excessive. Within the context of an employment relationship governed almost entirely by suspicion and informal power, it was less surprising.

Abakar���s previous work experience with another Chinese employer, Lian, told a different, hopeful story. Workers remained for many years, turnover was low, and disputes rarely escalated. Lian did not deny that workers occasionally took small amounts of food, nor did he pretend that poverty was irrelevant. Instead of responding with constant surveillance, he invested in training. Workers were taught professional kitchen standards, hygiene protocols, and additional skills such as driving and basic maintenance. Responsibilities were defined in advance, and authority operated within predictable limits.

Under Lian���s arrangement, the cook did more than acquire professional skills. With stable expectations and clear responsibilities, he was able to organize his days, manage his income, and maintain a sense of dignity that extended beyond the kitchen.

Yet life and work cannot be fully separated in domestic employment. When work takes place inside private homes, professional boundaries are easily dissolved by everyday intimacy. I saw this in another household, where a Chinese employer, Hong, lived and ate together with a much younger local cook. Their relationship was built on closeness rather than rules. Responsibilities were loosely defined, work discipline gradually weakened, and frustrations accumulated quietly on both sides. When the relationship eventually broke down, it ended in open conflict and a bitter departure. What had begun as care and generosity turned into resentment, not because of ill intent, but because work and life had never been clearly separated.

In tones of both Chinese employers and Chadian workers, these conflicts are often explained through personality, culture, or intent. Yet what is striking across different households is not who behaves better but who ends up performing the work of regulation. Chinese employers are more prone to conflict not because they lack a sense of rules but because they are more often pushed into highly exposed domestic arrangements, where institutional mediation is absent and governance is effectively privatized.

One evening, after leaving his job, Abakar reflected on these experiences in his own words:���Working with Chinese bosses requires patience,��� he said. ���Not because of culture, but because work is personal when rules are missing. When everything depends on mood or trust, conflict is only a matter of time.���

Burna Boy���s highly publicized Lagos prison visit looked like generosity, but it also looked like content. Who was it really for?Burna Boy at the Untold Festival in Romania 2024. Image credit Lucian Nu���� CC BY-SA 2.0.

Videos recently circulated of Burna Boy driving through Lagos with Very Dark Man (VDM), cash in hand, on their way to a prison to ���randomly��� free inmates. The clips were edited for social media: gates, uniforms, handshakes, gratitude. It looked like generosity. It also looked like content.

Burna Boy is not just another celebrity dabbling in philanthropy. He is Afrobeats��� most globally legible figure, an artist whose success now sits at the intersection of African cultural production and Western institutional recognition. Few musicians embody the genre���s circulation as convincingly. Precisely because of that stature, his performance of charity deserves scrutiny rather than automatic praise. What matters is not only whether celebrities help, but what their help does politically, what it displaces, and who it is ultimately for.

Burna Boy has long been uneasy about where his legitimacy comes from. While promoting I Told Them, he dismissed Afrobeats productions as musically inconsequential, a remark that sounded less like critique than anxious self-exceptionalism. It was a curious move from someone whose career is inseparable from the genre���s global expansion. Yet the impulse to stand apart, to appear elevated above the field he inhabits, continues to shape how he negotiates recognition, authority, and global validation.

With the next Grammy Awards approaching, Burna Boy is again nominated, including for Best African Music Performance and Best Global Music Album. These nominations matter not only because they reward sound, but because the Grammys increasingly reward posture and moral legibility. The institution does not simply crown music. It curates what a ���responsible��� global artist should look like. African musicians, in particular, are expected to appear humane, socially aware, and politically readable to transnational audiences.

In this sense, the Grammys function less as a neutral stage than as a disciplining institution. They shape the kinds of musical and moral performances that circulate upward into prestige. They not only evaluate art; they train artists on how to be seen. The question becomes not just what an artist sounds like, but also what ethical figure they present themselves to be, and for whom that performance is staged. Increasingly, the audience is not local publics, but global gatekeepers, industry voters, and liberal spectators who reward moral visibility alongside sonic innovation.

It is in this context that Burna Boy���s appearance with VDM becomes legible. The two were filmed driving to a Lagos prison carrying cash, framed as an attempt to free prisoners. The visit was documented, edited, and circulated online. This did not come across as quiet philanthropy. It appeared more like spectacle.

For an artist of Burna Boy���s stature, the form of the gesture matters as much as its intention. He has the capacity to support prison reform through legal aid organizations, rehabilitation programmes, bail funds, policy advocacy, or sustained institutional partnerships. Nigeria���s prison crisis is not one of missing charity, but of governance: overcrowding, prolonged pretrial detention, lack of legal representation, and slow courts. A large share of inmates await trial for extended periods, often because they cannot navigate bail, lawyers, or administrative delays.

In this context, a convoy of cash does nothing to reform the reality. It performs relief. Whether Burna Boy���s choice was calculated, intuitive, or shaped by social media incentives, the consequence is the same. Charity becomes visible before it becomes structural.

This is where celebrity humanitarianism reveals its political superficiality. Even when motivated by genuine concern, spectacular charity recenters authority, narrative, and moral judgment in the hands of the celebrity. The story becomes about who gave rather than what changed. Systems recede while the individual shines. Institutions are bypassed while optics are amplified. What looks like intervention often displaces harder political work: public debate about sentencing, policing, court delays, and funding for legal aid. Celebrity charity does not simply respond to existing struggles. It reorganizes them. It substitutes governance with performance, politics with affect, and collective demand with individualized rescue. The prison becomes content, prisoners become symbols, and reform becomes something imagined through visibility rather than through law, policy, or sustained organizing.

VDM���s presence sharpens this logic. He occupies a distinctive position in Nigeria���s public sphere as a confrontational digital figure whose work oscillates between activism and content creation. Though he prefers the label ���online police,��� his practice is rooted in exposure, populist accountability, and public shaming. Unlike many commentators who monetize Nigerian crises from abroad, VDM is physically present in Nigeria, and this grants him credibility and moral capital.

By aligning publicly with VDM, Burna Boy taps into that capital. The gesture signals proximity to ���the people��� and to popular justice. At the same time, it folds popular accountability into celebrity narrative. The prison becomes a stage, the prisoners recede into the background, and the camera becomes the main beneficiary. What circulates is not reform, but reputation.

The timing is revealing, though not conspiratorial. The prison spectacle followed backlash from an incident in the US, when Burna Boy demanded that a sleeping fan be removed from his concert or he would stop performing. The episode circulated widely, casting him as petulant and cruel, hardly the moral image one wants circulating ahead of Grammy voting. Public figures rarely act from a single motive. Reputation, pressure, conscience, and institutional incentives blur together. What matters is how those forces translate into behavior inside systems that reward moral display.

Seen this way, the prison visit functions as reputational repair. It reframes Burna Boy as compassionate and socially attentive. Whether prisoners were meaningfully assisted becomes secondary to how the story travels. In the economy of celebrity activism, circulation often outweighs consequence.

This anxiety around legitimacy is not new. Burna Boy���s Grammy win for Twice as Tall was later complicated by the controversies surrounding Sean ���Diddy��� Combs, the album���s executive producer. His aggressive response to online mockery linking his success to Diddy, including the arrest of Speed Darlington, revealed how sensitive he is to the narratives that authenticate his success. Recognition is not simply earned. It is curated and defended.

Since the US incident, restraint has become the strategy. No scandals. No excesses. Just careful positioning. In that light, the VDM-led charity spectacle reads less as generosity than as rehearsal, an exercise in moral visibility suited to an award culture that rewards not only talent, but also virtue that photographs well.

Critical scholarship on celebrity humanitarianism has long noted this pattern. Public charity mediated through cameras privileges performance over structure, visibility over transformation, and affect over accountability. The celebrity becomes interpreter, rescuer, and narrator, while institutions and communities become the supporting cast.

None of this diminishes Burna Boy���s musical brilliance. But it exposes a contradiction in contemporary celebrity power in Africa. Artists are expected to be musicians, diplomats, moral figures, and global ambassadors at once. Institutions such as the Grammys intensify that pressure.

When charity poses for a Grammy, the issue is not sincerity. It is power. What looks like generosity operates as a performance calibrated for circulation and institutional recognition. The danger is not that celebrities intervene in social life, but that intervention becomes theatre. And when theatre replaces politics, visibility becomes a substitute for justice.

The passing of Raila Odinga has unsettled Kenya���s political equilibrium, exposing a crowded field of veterans, opportunists, and activists, alongside a growing generational demand to reclaim power from an aging elite.Mourners at the memorial for Raila Amolo Odinga at Kasarani Stadium, Nairobi, October 2025. Image credit Dawan Africa CC BY 4.0.

The last quarter of 2025 jolted Kenya���s political landscape like no other; Raila Odinga, arguably Kenya���s most visible politician in the last three decades, joined his ancestors on the morning of October 15���the master of political handshakes had taken his final bow and exited the political scene for good. Fifth time unlucky as a presidential potentate, it���s believed Raila would have given the presidency a sixth stab, defying all odds, including his advancing age (he would have been 82 in 2027).

In December 2025, the death of another maverick politician, Cyrus Jirongo, shook the nation���s consciousness. Not so much because he was as beloved as Raila, but because of the bizarre nature of his death: Jirongo ostensibly died in a grisly road accident at an ungodly hour of the morning of December 13, 100 kilometres from his home in Nairobi. Many mysteries surround the last hours of his life: he is having a drink with friends in a posh neighborhood of greater Nairobi, and at about 11:30 p.m., he rounds off his stay with a nightcap and heads home to an equally posh neighborhood created for the nouveau riche. How he ended up on the Trans Africa highway, which also leads to his rural home, continues to baffle many Kenyans. Jirongo would have been 65 in March 2026. And he is relevant here because he became infamous for creating a nebulous entity called Youth for Kanu in 1992 (YK 92), which propelled a besieged President Daniel Moi to recapture power in the December 1992 general election, and is the same formation that conscripted and launched one William Ruto, freshly graduated from the University of Nairobi.

At his requiem service on December 30, 2025, retired President Uhuru Kenyatta, among other things, described Jirongo as a man who was fit to be a president. Indeed, in the 2017 general election, Jirongo was one of the eight candidates who were cleared by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to run for the coveted presidential seat. Would Jirongo have tossed himself into the 2027 presidential contest had he lived?

Nineteen months to the August 10, 2027, presidential election, the candidates have already ballooned to 15, including President Ruto, who will be seeking to win his second term. The only other time we had this many candidates was in 1997: There were 15 candidates that included Moi, who was on his way out, and Mwai Kibaki (who, subsequently, defeated Moi���s prot��g��, the greenhorn Uhuru Kenyatta in 2002 to become the country���s third president), Raila Odinga, and two female candidates including Wangari Maathai, who later became a Nobel laureate.

After the 1997 general elections, Raila, who ran with the National Democratic Party (NDP), joined Moi���s Kenya African National Union (KANU) party, and was even made its secretary-general. By dissolving his NDP, Raila had essentially initiated his first of several political handshakes. Thereafter, Raila trained his guns on being made the presidential flagbearer in 2002, but Moi had other ideas; he picked a prince, the blue-eyed boy called Uhuru Kenyatta���scion of the larger Kenyatta family. Piqued by Moi���s brazen choice, Raila orchestrated a walkout of the equally resentful KANU stalwarts, and they formed the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that joined the National Alliance of Kenya (NAK) and became the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), of which Kibaki was the frontrunner���Kibaki successfully bid for president with NARC in 2002 and, albeit contentiously, in 2007 .

When Kibaki���s term ended in 2012, Uhuru defeated Raila���s presidential bids in 2013 and 2017. After both defeats, Raila went to court. In 2013, the Supreme Court of Kenya (SCOK) ruled out this petition and said that their case was unconvincing. However, in September 2017, the SCOK, under Chief Justice David Maraga, annulled Uhuru���s Jubilee Party victory and called for fresh elections in 60 days. Unexpectedly, Raila, then the National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition candidate, opted out of the race, and technically, Uhuru ran against himself, to the chagrin of many Kenyans. Even so, on March 9, 2018, Raila, characteristically with an ace up his sleeve, shook hands with Uhuru, undoubtedly his fiercest antagonist, and claimed his third handshake.

Interestingly, Maraga, now retired, will be one of the presidential contenders come 2027. Maraga will be running on a United Green Movement (UGM) party ticket. The UGM party was co-founded by Agostinho Neto, a former MP, to presumably champion green politics, but also after he failed to regain Raila���s party nomination for the 2017 elections. With the former chief justice joining Neto, it isn���t clear whether he joined the party because he���s also a champion of green politics (whatever that means in the Kenyan context), or because he will not have to fight to be nominated as the party presidential flagbearer. Whatever the case, Maraga has been aligning himself with Gen Z, who, in June 2024, jolted the nation with their countrywide protests and shook President Ruto���s government to the extent that he had to occasion a cabinet reshuffle. Maraga projects himself as a clean man untainted by the corruption scandals that seemingly dog many of the political elites. He is calling for constitutional order and claims his government will be a government of law and due diligence. However, in 2027, Maraga will be 76 years old. And it will be interesting to see how he goes about creating the all-important nexus between himself and the Gen Z demographic, if, indeed, he hopes to tap into the single largest non-ethnic voting bloc that could propel his candidature.

It is not only Maraga who is looking to woo Gen Z; spurred on by the June 2024 zillennial zeitgeist, three civil society and political activists have taken up the cue and declared their presidential bids: Bob Njagi, Boniface Mwangi, and Sungu Oyoo. Although they themselves are not Gen Z, they would like to believe they are closer to Gen Z in spirit and political makeup. The activists joined their protests and, as seasoned ���street boys,��� lent their hands and shared strategies and tactics in dealing with the trigger-happy riot police and paramilitary. But there is also something else, I believe; this is the presidential candidature of Robert Kyagulanyi, a.k.a. Bobi Wine, in neighboring Uganda. Bobi, the former MP, was only four years old when President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni stomped into Kampala City and effectively became president in 1986. Four decades later, Museveni is still at the helm, and won the presidency again after ethe lections on January 15, 2026. I don���t think Bobi has caused Museveni sleepless nights, but he has agonized over the fact that a young man old enough to be his last born son has been drawing organic crowds better than the choreographed National Resistance Movement (NRM) ones. Bobi, apparently, serves as a good model for the younger generation across East Africa that is keen to wrestle power from the political dinosaurs.

The double abductee Njagi announced his candidature on November 12, 2025. Njagi has had the rare distinction of being abducted by both the governments of Kenya and Uganda. In 2024, Njagi was abducted by the Kenya police following the wave of Gen Z protests. In October 2025, he was kidnapped alongside a friend, Nicholas Oyoo, by Ugandan police in central Kampala; without a doubt, this was a kidnapping sanctioned by the Ugandan state, and which Museveni openly bragged about.

Sungu will be running on a Kenya Left Alliance platform, courtesy of the Ukweli (Truth) Party. The Ukweli Party was co-founded by activist Boniface Mwangi, who, in 2017, tried his hand at urban politics by unsuccessfully vying for a parliamentary position in Nairobi. If, as Sungu claims, he will be running as the candidate for the Ukweli Party, what platform will Mwangi run on? When launching his bid in August 2025, Mwangi never spoke of the party he will use; of course it is assumed it will be the Ukweli Party, in which case, then, he and Oyoo will have to square off for the nomination ticket.

The troika of Njagi, Oyoo, and Mwangi are not the only activists who will be throwing their hats into the ring; Okoiti Omtatah, the current senator of Busia County, will also be vying subject to the report of an exploratory team that he set up in November 2024 to traverse the country and determine the suitability and viability of his bid for the top seat. The ten-member team was given 18 months to do this work, and to report back to Okoiti by May 2026. For close to three decades, Okoiti has stamped his authority as a preeminent social and political activist in this part of the world. A playwright of note, Okoiti is also the Rambo of constitutional litigation in Kenya, a venerable one-man army and peoples��� advocate, who has battled with the state over matters of constitution and constitutionalism.

Since the onset of the return to multiparty politics 35 years ago, there have been other nondescript characters that have vied for the presidency, oftentimes for the feel-good factor. In 2027, there will be no shortage of them: They include Ruth Odinga, a younger sister to departed Raila Odinga, who publicly said that she was considering vying for the presidency a month after her brother���s death. And Fred Ogola, an economist and virulent critic of President Ruto, has also said he will toss himself into the ring.

In another interesting twist, Oburu Odinga, ��Raila���s brother, said that he, too, will be gunning for the presidency if the Orange Democratic Party (ODM) opts to field a candidate. As the interim party leader of ODM, Raila���s party, this ���youth leader��� will be 84 in 2027 and will be the oldest of the presidential contestants. It looks like the Odinga family isn���t ready to forgo the presidential ambition that has eluded them since the days of the patriarch Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who first ran for this seat in 1992.

Presumably, the biggest threat to President Ruto���s second term will come from the fragile and nascent ���,��� a motley group of oldies and has-been politicians, some of whom are hoping to cap their political careers by capturing the presidency. The senior most of this political cabal is Kalonzo: He will be 74 in 2027, and has been everything but president. In the controversial elections of 2007, which led to the post-election violence (PEV), he came third after Kibaki and Raila. In the subsequent Government of National Unity (GNU), formed to assuage and incorporate Raila, who then became the country���s second prime minister, Kibaki named Kalonzo his vice president. Kalonzo hoped Kibaki would lend him support after his final term ended, principally for saving him from the jaws of Raila���s defeat. Kibaki didn���t, and for the next decade, from 2012, he commenced his dalliance with Raila, serving as his running mate in 2013 and 2017. In 2027, Kalonzo will again run for the presidency under a revamped Wiper Democratic Front Party. Also within the United Opposition, Matiang���i strikes one as the odd man out: a former powerful super Cabinet secretary in Uhuru���s government, he was endorsed on October 30, 2025, as the Jubilee Party flagbearer. Matiang���i has been described as Uhuru���s marionette, with many within the opposition ranks suspiciously viewing him as Uhuru���s project.

The impeachment of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, in October 2024, was meant to bury his career but has instead catapulted him to national fame. In February 2025, he formed the Democratic Citizen Party (DCP), and Gachagua, also within the ���United Opposition,��� has now said he will run for president in 2027, notwithstanding his impeachment barring him from contesting any political seat.

On December 30, 2025, Kalonzo said the United Opposition will announce its consensus flagbearer in April 2026. It is probably a badly kept secret that the candidate is Kalonzo himself. But, in the new year, contradicted Kalonzo and said the ���united��� candidate will not be revealed until three months before the August 2027 election.

Outside of the United Opposition, but still noteworthy, is the candidature of businessman Jimi Wanjigi. If there���s an opposition figure who has enlightened Kenyans on the debilitating, mounting, and odious debt that is threatening to strangle the country���s economy, it is Jimi. He has continually and single-handedly broadcast and elevated the national debt discourse to the lips of every Kenyan of all walks of life.

Even as he looms large in the histories of many of these ���oldies��� candidates, for the first time in 30 years, Raila Odinga will not personally be a factor in the coming general election. Or will he? In all the preceding elections since 1997, he largely dictated the pace and rhythm of the electioneering process. What or who will dictate the pace of the 2027 campaign rhythm? In the coming days, we will soon get an answer to this all-important question.

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani���s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.Ugandan Asian families arrive at Schiphol Airport after their expulsion from Uganda, November 24, 1972. Image credit Bert Verhoeff via Anefo (Nationaal Archief) CC0.

In the coastal Indian state of Goa, with no end of charismatic churches, the Mae de Deus Church in Saligao, Bardez, is an arresting sight. The neo-gothic, quaintly ribbed, avant-garde design is more creature than building, a sanguine figure of fantasy insectile in its grace and bewitching in the yet-still-novel mid-19th-century application of the genre to sacral purpose. Architecturally (the Portuguese pair of Major Martins who designed this timeless marvel, and another Martin, Manuel Ferreira who built it, completed it in 1873) it performs a pas de deux with the land around it; the coconut spread of the humid Konkan coast, the acres of paddy fields racing towards the church, confect a postcardable���nay, a hugely Instagramable���icon.

What was it celebrating when, at the time it was built, the great emigration from the Indian subcontinent was underway? Not yet a part of India, Saligao in the Goan taluka of Bardez, was part of a world that no longer exists but would continue as the woebegone Portuguese Estado da India until 1961.

By then, centuries of cruel history had ploughed over Afonso de Albuquerque���s idyll���the word ill fits the war criminal but this is how he saw it���so that the Estado faced, not one, but several failures. It failed spiritually. It failed economically, and in so doing, failed politically. And like much of the Portuguese empire, it came under nominal British influence. For the 450 years Portugal colonized Goa, Daman, and Diu, which made up the Estado da India, barely 100 of those can be said to have been prosperous and stable, meaning that for over three centuries, the Portuguese empire was really part of what British historian Eric Hobsbawm referred to as the secondary British empire.

By the 1590s, a colony founded in 1510 was already on the skids after the Catholic Church took control. Other European powers only allowed Portugal to hold on to its empire out of courtesy for its whiteness. By the 1840s, British power was such that it ranged freely into Portuguese India, as it did in other Lusophone holdings in South America, to pick what it wanted.

Then, in 1869, the construction of the Suez Canal changed the dynamics of global trade. France and the new empire of Germany intruded into what Britain regarded as its terrain. Allied with emergent tariff protectionism, this intrusion set Britain���s sights on the entire Eastern flank of the African continent. A fight was on. To secure India, Britain needed to control the Suez Canal; for this, it had to control Egypt; doing so meant capturing the source of the River Nile. And that in itself meant control of the eastern coastline of the African continent, and in this mounting logic ad absurdum, by which an imperial power is trapped in an expansion it can barely escape, they ended up needing more of the resources of India in order to secure India.

This is how the drama of Uganda with the dramatis personae of Major Charles Gordon, Henry Morton Stanley, Emin Pasha, Capt. Frederick Lugard and the later religious wars of Mmengo were triggered, all a part of the scheme for control of the River Nile. When the events narrated in this book occur, the family of Prof Mahmood Mamdani was not just in Uganda to be in Uganda; they were playing their roles in the larger imperial theater of India. For Britain, India���s gifts were depthless. Without India���without the Bombay Presidency, with its financial and commercial clout���it is doubtful Britain would have beaten either France or Germany to Uganda. Part of the reason the 1888���1892 wars of Mmengo were so entrenched is that France, through the Catholic mission of the White Fathers, who were caught gunrunning, was actively scheming to colonise the country for itself.

India, with its large human population, its European education in both Anglo-India and Portuguese India, had long been taught to reproduce colonialism. In British thinking, it was what Lugard, in his book The Rise of Our East African Empire, referred to as ���semi-civilized���. It had in numbers men trained to build and run the railways. Studies in colonial jurisprudence had built up a body of ��volu�� lawyers. They knew its medicine. They knew its pedagogy.

The Indian merchant class, established long before there was a Western Europe, or a Europe at all, parried for gold with the Roman Empire, as British historian William Dalrymple in his book, The Golden Road: How India Transformed the Ancient World, argue.s This class gave the British the tool to open up eastern Africa in ways Bismarck���s Germany could not.

In turn, for many young men in British and Portuguese India ��� in their confessions and communities and castes ��� East Africa provided a chance to get away from the stifling colonial atmosphere, an oppressive Catholic Church, and caste rigidities. Incomes were several times higher than they were back home. In the matchmaking market, a young man connected to East Africa was a catch.

India, with its ���overpopulated provinces,��� Lugard (born in India and creator of British East Africa and the Uganda Protectorate at the age of only 32) wrote, would have to be brought to develop the ���embryonic civilized,��� ���half civilized,��� and ���savage��� lands of East and Central Africa. The first Indians to arrive in Uganda in the late 1890s did not come for trade. Several companies of the Army of Bombay were dispatched to what is now Uganda to help Major MacDonald���later Major General MacDonald���put down the Nubian mutiny in 1897. (There is the longer story here of the abandoned troops of Dr Emin Pasha that Lugard had no choice but to bring into Kampala with dire consequences for Uganda at large, given that it was also the way that this community later birthed Idi Amin.) Along with the final push against Kabaka Mwanga and Omukama Kabalega, these Sikh battalions established the Punjabi community in the region.

In the popular imagination, ���Indians��� in East Africa came for two reasons: to build the railway and to trade. By far the greater majority in the 1890s did come for these reasons. But many who came to work on the railway went back to India. This simplifies history. Indian merchants had for over a millennium been on East African coasts. The chief focus has been on the age of imperialism. And in this age, over the next several decades, people came individually, the recruiters at the feed-in side keeping stock of placements and charging passage fees. But India is too vast for a single story plotline.

If this narrative was the lot of Antonio Rodrigues of Margao, who came to work and live in Entebbe in 1928, then it was also the world of Jairam Sewji, of Aldina Visram and Alibhai Jeevanjee���India at the other scale, of money and power, and of the Aga Khan���s Ismaili community of Khojas, a world of even more power. A structured India came to East Africa alongside individual narratives. This confection was a complete superfood; Britain did not need to bother with spice further. It already owned the patent to the colonial wheel. They literally transplanted India across the Arabian Sea. Not just the people.

The currency adopted in these years was the rupee, in the silver anna denominations of 2, 4, and 8; the rupee notes in 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 denominations. It was a power play; the Africans were not without a currency. The cowrie shells the East Africans mostly used were roundly rejected by the British. In one fell swoop, the equivalent of entire national GNPs, GDPs, and their attendant savings, accumulated over lifetimes, were erased; family, clan, and state wealth were wiped out. In reverse, now the white and Asian settlers were beginning to sink their own family legacies. It was an economic holocaust the impact of which would continue to be felt for generations to come. This is the catastrophe under which Africans commenced the perilous seven decades of colonial occupation. The British had a plan.

The new colonial taxes Africans were forced to pay were levied in Rupees, not in the cowries they possessed; Rs 4 paid annually in hut tax and Rs 2 in poll tax, levied on Africans above 16 years of age. Failure to pay in cash meant a month of labour for the poll tax, and two for the hut tax, carried out on colonial government projects. Via this schema, barely any Africans who worked to build the colony were paid.

The Indian Penal Code, the very famous IPC, was another consequential transplant that continues to form the basis of East African Common Law as per the Order in Council of 1902, in total disregard for African legal heritage. (In later years, the British would introduce the Australian Queensland Code, but the IPC continued to underpin East African laws.) There was the complicated matter of legal pluralism by which different communities fell under different laws, but that is another subject matter.

But it was the issuance of trading licences that opened up the widest inequality gaps of all, and which brought the conflict of Indian and African commercial interests into the political crisis described in this book. In these early years, only Asians and Europeans were awarded trading licences. Africans could not own the lucrative cotton ginneries. The African was still regarded as the natural slave.

Within this evolving catastrophe, the rationing of African employment set the essential racial hierarchies. Even employment in the police for Africans was frowned upon out of fear that it would take away labour from private enterprises. The force paid three times what wage labour paid. Native Africans preferred police, with its powers and prestige, to wage labor. Voices, including from the influential Church Missionary Society, let alone the chambers of commerce, called for this avenue to be blocked, for the posts to be reserved for the Sikhs, in order to force Africans into the labor market.

The most consequential abuses were in Buganda. There, native chiefs aided in the abuse and exploitation of their fellow Baganda. The Buganda collaborator class, handsomely paid from ��200 (��32,000) for county governors to ��400 (��64,000 in 2026 Pounds Sterling) a year for the regents of the young Kabaka Daudi Cwa II, did not protect their own people the way Indian communities protected and promoted the interests of theirs ��� an own goal that the more savage anti-Indian voices in the kingdom do not care to admit. With their handsome paychecks, bigger than the nominal cabinet salaries in 2025 money, these chiefs, whose families remain the powerful landlords referenced in this book, readily procured black labor to ensure the cotton, rubber and coffee plantations were manned. Pressure ranged anywhere from land evictions to corporal punishment; death by burning their own people had been stopped by the British.

A further weapon hardly commented on was the rationing of urbanity. As the platform unit for colonization, it etched segregation into the landscape and neatly controlled the parameters of having and of having-not. It was in the towns that colonial injustices were the most visceral. Colonialism in this form was urban, bourgeois in its denotative sense. This is a very crucial point to understand, particularly for voices that blamed Africans for not doing enough.

The town was where the economy gravitated. Into these, the Europeans and Asians brought centuries of their urban culture along with the social values accumulated in these naturally socially hierarchical and segregated constructs. By the time these communities arrived in Uganda, they had already developed the bourgeois instinct, its culture and notion of values long delinked from rural sensibilities. The Africans who arrived from the rural areas into these constructs still relied on what would later be called the social or solidarity economy, as indeed the peri-urban economics of cities like Kampala still operate. Against the extractive efficiency of bourgeois systems, they were lambs to the slaughter. This places the conflicts described here in a wider history of human society, rather than simply race against race, and requires deeper knowledge of such dynamics to take apart.

At the beginning, Africans provided labor because under systems like Buganda, it was an honour to work for the state ��� or as the vernacular has it, to work for the Kabaka. The rewards were often recruitment into public, kingdom offices. Under the colonial dispensation, the reward was loss of status, health, and even life. Learning the ways of urban, bourgeois labor relations was a steep carve that took till the 1930s, and 1940s, for the Africans to come to terms with, and when they did, their reaction, via unionization, strikes, protests and boycotts, began to undo the latent colonial idyll.

In the essential years of value and wealth transfer away from African control, they were required to provide the labour, to clean and keep the towns in trim, but not allowed to live within the towns. Regarded as the polluted race, they found themselves in dangerous, fetid, new environments their culture was not cut out for. The reduction in status, loss of health and attendant malnutrition, the loss of age and generational set status, underscored the fact that it was the African alone who was not allowed in these urban environments without the antidote to the construct���a traditional religion, a financial capital plan, and the requisite unguents of social and artistic culture suited for these new realities. With the exception of the kingdoms of Uganda, this was the first time many of the Africans were experiencing structured oppression.

To this day, urban areas function as breakers of African culture and social bonds. The many rich neighborhoods in the cities and towns grew up with corresponding ghettos attached to them of maids, ���boys,��� cooks, nannies, garbage collectors, gatekeepers and security guards too poor to live in the same rich areas but paid less than they needed to transport themselves daily to work. That the poor and rich can and should live side by side remains unthinkable.

There was a further complexity to Uganda, which set it apart from Kenya: In the British East Africa protectorate, which did not gain the name Kenya until 1920, the large presence of white settlers placed the white man squarely in view as the oppressor and transmitter of exploitation and appropriator of lands. In Uganda, there were never more than 6,000 white people at any point in time. In contrast, there were up to 250,000 in Kenya. This left the Ugandan ���Bayindi��� as the embodiment of this complex encounter.

Slow Poison is a book too large for its 280 pages. In terms of structure and content, it is a compendium. The semi-autobiographical texture serves to dispense with the difficulties a historian might face in setting these themes ��� if the word is adequate. Mamdani is alive to this history. A realist and a storyteller, he deftly embeds his personal experience with the intellectual bearing that makes his work trustworthy. We are grateful for the stories he tells. We learn about Idi Amin���s history in ways we have not come across before. That Idi Amin���s mother was so close to the Buganda Royal family (Daudi Cwa II) and that the family may owe its continuance to her, goes a long way in providing insight into what became of Kampala in the post-Mwanga years, its dependencies, its moral and social crises.

As a writer on Kampala myself, there are new insights here, and the city arises as a living ghost out of the rapid changes and shifts which the passage from colonialism to the end of post-colonialism occasioned. A colonial city, Kampala, cannot keep its memories without incurring contradictions.

The crisis that the Ugandan Indian community endured from the years after the Second World War takes the study from the broad into the personal. What the book does not overtly mention, but is everywhere, is the frailty of cosmopolitanism. Much as I earlier posted it as a crisis, the African faced thrown hothouse-style into commercial, coastal city culture, was and continues to be an unresolved crisis for all. Can constitutional law and the institutions of pedagogy, commerc,e and industry truly create a platform on which people can define their place away from the fraught cosmologies of social groups, bloodlines, and autochthonous politics? The Africans who came to the colonial urban cauldron suffered intensely for not knowing the game. But even the most seasoned heritage still functions within systems of power, and when the economic underpinnings of these threaten even the most seemingly enlightened, the redoubt remains the volk. The ���semi-civilised��� of Lugard���s framing suddenly became ethnic and a problem for the British Isles when their very home turf became the point of immigration. As the anti-immigration din in the West ratchets up, we are watching how the biggest exporters of migrants to other people���s lands actually think of the idea.

In the post-World War One years, the East African shilling replaced the rupee. Removal of legal segregation followed. But the momentum of the beginning of the colony lingered on. Segregated settlement could not be so easily undone. There was the matter of real estate, and of cultural differences, to say nothing of extra-legal barriers elite Asian and White neighborhoods raised to keep black people away.

But the worst factor for the central region of Uganda in these decades was the land tenure. The mailo land has been studied extensively, but I���ll draw attention to a factor not so well known publicly. The towns and cities where Europeans and Asians settled were leasehold tenure. The Africans were mostly subject to mailo land.

The survey and determination of mailo land took more than 30 years to complete, as its cost ballooned from an original ��75,000 (��12m) budget in 1906, to ��200,000 (��31m) when it ended in 1936. C.W. Allen, the surveyor for whom one of the earliest streets in Kampala was named, had estimated not more than 15 years for the exercise. By 1936, the colony had exhausted half its lifetime. A generation had come and gone and this slow-walked administrative barrier had prevented Africans from turning their holdings into lucrative commerce. It is the reason that African-owned lands even in Kampala today, remain unplanned slums, but that is a bigger topic. The setback to African enterprise, where Asian and European ones hit the ground running, was considerable.

Reading through Slow Poison and absorbing the family biography of its author, I was reminded of cycling through the Goan countryside and struggling to come to terms with the fact that everybody I spoke to had a link to East Africa. The Tanzanians, the Ugandans, the Kenyans. There were people with ties to Zambia, South Africa, and Malawi, but East Africa had a particular hold. The Mamdani family is a very special part of a special group of the Indian diaspora���the business and intellectual elite who, cross-migrating into the Anglo-Saxon world, found that their education and place in the business of the empire gave them an extra edge in the capitalist, globalist instinct of bourgeois Anglo-Saxons, as either perpetrators of the system, or its critics. It is a revealing turn of events that, as the keystone of Anglo-Saxon power wanes, it is turning increasingly to its East African Indian affiliates in search of political remedies. India had once been the making of their empire. Now that the empire is in decline, a natural homing instinct seems to point them to a magnetic, imperial North that once made their fortune.

Mine is a contextual reading of Slow Poison. As a Ugandan, this reading was irresistible. But it is also the kind of book that provokes its readers to think about their own place in the narrative being told, and hence, risks not being ready primarily. It is perhaps the fate that a man with the long, academic, and vast grasp of historical and current affairs such as Prof Mamdani is bound to suffer.

Or be read as a political crutch, as towards the run-up to the historical mayoral elections of New York, editors began casting about for anything that could explain the phenomenon of Mamdani fils. They came looking for signs that�� Zohran���s leftist bent did not fall far from the tree; they came looking for what kind of tree he sprouted out of. There were many disingenuous reactions; that Mamdani’s paterfamilias��� studied approach to politics was a betrayal of the experience of Indians expelled by Idi Amin; that he was misrepresenting Uganda; that he misread Museveni. Some came for signs that what had gone on could be assuaged by the all-seeing eye of history.

At some point, after the Helen Epstein review for the New York Review of Books, I resolved to stop reading reviews until I got my hands on the book. I found little of what many reviewers were talking about. I was perhaps caught up in my own reader���s prejudice; what I found was the first coherent account of my own coming-of-age years, but to a continuing white gaze, of what use is this account?

It is a book for Ugandans only, being read widely. A very becoming account of the post-colonial collapse of the Ugandan state and a personal, street-level insight into the issues and personalities that shaped the age. Mamdani draws them close enough to smell their breath. That long drive Mamdani shared with Museveni in a VW Combi in Nyerere���s Tanzania, from Moshi to Dar es Salaam, deserves its own account. He was perhaps too close to Museveni for comfort, given what the tyrant has become, and for this, he, like the late Ali Mazrui, who trumpeted the tyrant in his early days, owed Ugandans some explanation. Has he done so here?

Mamdani knew many of the dramatis personae paraded here and was a lot closer to the creation of post-Amin Uganda than even followers of his work might have imagined. As a Ugandan, I began to see something familiar. This was our book, but like our lives, and because of that, it has gotten caught up in the familiar, impervious, imperial narrative malaise from writers like Helen Epstein who come to the colonies and disregard all they see and only take what they want. You feel dismissed and patronised. Not so with Mamdani, and this is the essential character that endears him to many here.

The reason Mamdani is a celebrated scholar is that he was there with the country all along and did not let the experience of 1972 distort his studious approach. It takes a lot of character to achieve that. In the crunch of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he chose to become a taxi driver in Kampala rather than leave Makerere University and the country when there was so much rebuilding to do. He became a member of a

drinking group; this was the social media network of the time���the marwa club, that millet brew served in a hot water suspense and sipped through a long straw���the Facebook of Kampala. He refused offers of a cabinet job at the time because he wanted his perspectives unsullied. For Ugandan readers, respect for Mamdani can only go up after reading this book.

Unless they are Musevenists, at which point their shock at having their man lined up alongside Idi Amin, then found wanting, will not let them read it soberly. They have accused him, as Uganda���s inestimable Musevenista ambassador to the UN, Adonia Ayebare, did on his X account, of being ungrateful after all they did for him. (After his government tortured Stella Nyanzi, Adonia has the gall to say they saved Mamdani from her.) Amazing. Living now in Mamdani Jr���s New York should be a new pleasure for him.

The book is also a biography by a participatory observer who serves up delectable accounts of Ugandan society. Its main, if the word can be used, is the politics of identity in the transition of colonialism, but more importantly, how identity was weaponised by colonialism and how, in perpetuating the same, Mr Museveni betrayed the emergent nation.

The protagonist-antagonists in this tale are two of Uganda���s military rulers, Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni. But any expectation of a compare-and-contrast framing soon runs into the fact that the tale itself is set in the wider tableau of Uganda. There is a fine line here between Uganda and the perceived Ugandan-ness. The perceived one can here be traced to the emergent nationalism of the 1930s, when the awakening consciousness movement of Marcus Garvey coined the phrase, Africa for Africans. Did this easily but misleadingly lead to the short-circuiting of the African identity to blackness? What is ���Uganda���? Or ���Kenya���, for that matter? This is a question that can hit you hard in places you did not know about, as happened to me when I visited Goa.

There, nearly everyone I spoke to was the progeny of, or related to, someone who had come to East Africa, or been born here. The decades following the Amin explosion left deep wounds. There was the memory of parents whose longing for their homes in Uganda was one of the saddest things I���ve ever been confronted with. In those moments, I am split between loyalty to my pre-colonial Bunyoro-Kitara and Nilotic heritage, began to see how much I may have taken ���Uganda��� for granted. India gave me Uganda!

This fine line between nationalism via an autochthonous heritage can easily be confused with citizenship. ���Uganda���, I began to see in India, did not belong to blackness any more than ���Uganda Railway��� in any way implied the railway line was invented by that ethnicised, black Uganda.

There is an argument here for understanding cosmopolitanism and how the immigrant Indians may have seen things. India���s coastal cities had long been cosmopolitan by the time the Portuguese arrived: Europe, Mughal, Persia, Asia, and even Africa had combined through the long millennia to create their characteristics. Portugal added its own thing to further the growth of a long de-ethnicized identity, at which point the word is open to play. Even on the most touchy of Indian subjects, religion, even caste itself, as Indian historian Manu Pillai in his tome, Guns, Gods and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity argues, have been subject to fluidity. Here were people who for millennia had understood the fractal expansiveness of identity and had developed an accommodation with it, being flung into a world which had been sheltered from it.

The Indian-African encounter in this age was a case of bad timing. By themselves, it is unlikely there would have been better relationships, but the texture of it would have been different. Colonial weaponising of ���race��� made it a foregone conclusion that something like the expulsion of 1972 was coming. But was it based on fear or misunderstanding? After all, the ���Bayindi��� were no more a solid, single unit than the Africans themselves were one tribe. Blaming Indians for colonial injustice did not prevent Amin from massacring thousands of Lango and Acholi people, who are as black as he is. Or perhaps, did the Indian immigrants, as well as white settlers, bring with them a cosmopolitan culture whose value systems were too remote from African, communitarian culture the latter found threatening? How much does this explain the current conflicts between the so-called Gen Z and the entrenched neoliberal elite? Are the neoliberal political and business class of Ruto, Museveni and Samia the new ���Bayindi���?

There is another matter to consider, and this is the differences in colonial experience between Africans and Indians: We had not been colonized long enough nor occupied often enough to develop a fatalistic acceptance. In comparison to colonialism in India, 1972 was the early days of even speaking of a colonial experience at all. In Indian terms, 1972 would be 1582, seven decades since Afonso de Albuquerque, the Indian equivalent of Capt. Lugard took Goa. The grinding centuries from then on, to 1961, when the last of European rule in India came to an end, can only give an idea of what the Indians who ended up here would know of colonial rule. In Indian terms, East Africans would have to wait till the years beginning in 2300 to begin to understand their relationships to India.

Mamdani���s intellectual framing of these issues parses some of these ideas, however indirectly. There are givens. Indian construction of identity is what it is. British colonial policy did not set out to create intercommunal harmony. It was a set-up. But, and this is the argument of this book, there was the matter of the nation-state, based on constitutionalist underpinnings, the task of nation-building after the catastrophe. Such a construct cannot be ethnic ��� cannot afford to be ethnic, as Kenyans and Ugandans may have learnt by now. It has to overcome sectarian, group instinct, and arrive at an expansive understanding of the human being and human society. An enlightened construct sorely needed in today���s world.

Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State by Mahmood Mamdani (2025), is available from Harvard University Press.

Entre le co��t du transport a��rien, les r��gimes de visas, la culture t��l��visuelle et l���exclusion de classe, le probl��me de l���affluence �� la CAN est structurel ��� et non le signe d���un manque de passion des supporters.Feux d���artifice lors de la c��r��monie de cl��ture de la Coupe d���Afrique des Nations TotalEnergies 2025 au stade Prince Moulay Abdellah, �� Rabat, le 18 janvier 2025. Image : TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations (Facebook), utilis��e au titre du fair use.

Read in English here.

Bien que la victoire du S��n��gal en finale de la Coupe d’Afrique des Nations face au Maroc ait rempli les tribunes, le tournoi dans son ensemble a confirm�� la persistance d’une probl��matique structurelle du football africain. En dehors des matchs de l’��quipe h��te, les stades sont souvent �� moiti�� pleins. Malgr�� une organisation impeccable et des infrastructures de classe mondiale, la comp��tition a pein�� �� remplir ses gradins, ce qui renvoie �� des probl��matiques profondes qui d��passent le cadre du sport.

Ce ph��nom��ne n’est pas nouveau. En����gypte (2019), pour remplir les tribunes vides, les organisateurs avaient fait appel �� des militaires habill��s aux couleurs des ��quipes (BBC Sport, 2019). Les gradins clairsem��s que la production t��l��visuelle ne peut pas masquer sont une r��currence de nombreux matchs de la CAN

L’��dition ivoirienne de��2023��avait pourtant suscit�� l’espoir d’un changement durable. Les stades ��taient pleins, empreints d’une atmosph��re festive de chants et de danses. Mais cette r��ussite semble avoir ��t�� un��mirage contextuel, n�� de circonstances exceptionnelles, �� savoir la g��ographie et la d��mographie particuli��res de la C��te d’Ivoire, au c��ur de l’Afrique de l’Ouest et de la CEDEAO, et qui a profit�� de la pr��sence de fortes diasporas venues des pays voisins (Mali, Burkina Faso, S��n��gal et Guin��e.), dont les ��quipes ��taient qualifi��es. �� cela s���ajoute que la mobilit�� r��gionale, avec un r��seau routier int��gr�� et des transports inter-��tats abordables, a permis un afflux terrestre de supporters, option quasi inexistante pour un pays comme le Maroc, politiquement enclav�� par ses politiques de visa par rapport aux autres nations africaines, mais paradoxalement plus accessible aux touristes europ��ens.

Deux ans plus tard, le retour �� la r��alit�� au Maroc prouve qu’une organisation technique parfaite ne suffit pas. La demi-finale��S��n��gal-��gypte, pourtant cruciale, n’a pas fait le plein. Le probl��me semble plut��t syst��mique.

La vitalit�� d’un grand tournoi sportif d��pend de la capacit�� des fans �� se d��placer. Or, en Afrique, cette mobilit�� est entrav��e par de colossales barri��res structurelles.

Le transport a��rien est prohibitif en termes de co��ts. Les vols intra-africains sont parmi��les plus chers au monde. Comme le relevait un article de Lise-Marie Kesby publi�� par BBC, un trajet de distance similaire co��te��3 �� 5 fois plus cher��en Afrique qu’en Europe, avec des escales multiples et des dur��es multipli��es. Pour une grande partie de la classe moyenne africaine, suivre son ��quipe en avion rel��ve de l’utopie.

Les alternatives terrestres, sont limit��es.��Les r��seaux routiers et ferroviaires transnationaux sont insuffisants, fragment��s par des fronti��res politiques et des proc��dures administratives lourdes. Si un d��placement Abidjan-Ouagadougou est envisageable, un trajet Lagos-Rabat (5 473 km) ou Kinshasa-Casablanca (7 680 km) constitue une exp��dition logistique, s��curitaire et financi��re hors de port��e.

Le contexte socio-��conomique est g��n��ralement peu favorable.��Avec des ��conomies dont la majorit��, selon la Banque mondiale, est �� revenu interm��diaire ou faible, et un ch��mage des jeunes ��lev��, le public potentiel capable de supporter ces co��ts se r��duit drastiquement. Se d��placer pour assister �� la CAN est ainsi un ��v��nement pour une ��lite ��conomique et une diaspora b��n��ficiant de devises fortes.

Au-del�� des obstacles logistiques, une question plus fondamentale ��merge: le football africain est-il encore ancr�� dans le quotidien des Africains ?

Comme l’analyse Lamine Harlem dans Africa Is a Country, le v��ritable succ��s populaire de la CAN se mesure moins �� l’affluence dans les stades qu’�� son audience stade. Les ��crans des caf��s, des restaurants et des foyers �� travers le continent ont pris le relais. Ces lieux de sociabilit��, �� l’image des �� sports bars �� d��sormais omnipr��sents, sont les symboles d’une culture footballistique bien ancr��e en Afrique. S’ils ne sont pas la cause directe des gradins clairsem��s de la CAN et d’autres comp��titions en Afrique, ils en r��v��lent un sympt��me. L’exp��rience collective du match s’est largement d��plac��e du stade �� l’��cran, avec des implications r��elles pour le football africain.

Depuis les ann��es 1990, la t��l��vision satellitaire a d��plac�� le c��ur et les identit��s du football africain. Des g��n��rations enti��res ont grandi en idol��trant le��Bar��a, le Real Madrid ou Manchester United, consommant chaque week-end la Premier League ou la Liga via��beIN Sports, Canal+ ou SuperSport. M��me si des joueurs africains ont grandement contribu�� �� ces ancrages, cette exposition constante a, au fil des d��cennies, entra��n�� une��ali��nation culturelle, ��galement th��oris��e comme colonialisme ��lectronique. Les championnats locaux, per��us comme d��sorganis��s et de qualit�� m��diocre, sont d��laiss��s.

Le football est devenu un loisir��d��racin��. L’identification et l’implication ��motionnelles au football se vivent sur les ��crans �� travers des clubs europ��ens, ne laissant aux s��lections nationales qu’un��nationalisme par intermittence et par ��-coup, certes intense pendant la CAN, mais qui ne suffit pas �� remplir les stades pour un Mali-Congo. Conclusion : Au-del�� du Spectacle, Reconstruire les Fondamentaux

La CAN reste un ��v��nement m��diatique majeur, comme en t��moigne la hausse de ses droits t��l��vis��s. Elle suscite une passion r��elle, mais de plus en plus t��l��visuelle et sporadique. Pour inverser la tendance des tribunes vides, am��liorer la billetterie, construire de beaux stades et augmenter les revenus de la CAF ne suffiront pas. Il faudra s’attaquer aux d��fis structurels continentaux qui rel��vent des ��tats et des d��cideurs publics ou priv��s de la gouvernance du football.

La consommation et la participation au spectacle sportif reposent sur des infrastructures de mobilit��, telles que des transports a��riens abordables et un r��seau routier et ferroviaire rapide et s��r. R��vons d���une Afrique parcourus en dans tout les sens de TGV, d���autoroutes, de vol ����low-cost����.

Entre-temps, la revalorisation en profondeur des championnats locaux, pour recr��er un lien hebdomadaire entre les fans et leur football��de proximit��, en reconstruisant des identit��s qui font partie de l�����cosyst��me local. Investir et r��investir financi��rement, socialement et humainement dans le football de base, ses infrastructures de proximit��, et ses ressources humaines, pour r��enraciner la culture du jeu.

En attendant, la CAN continuera, tous les deux ans (puis tous les quatre ans), �� offrir un feu d’artifice ��motionnel intense mais bref. Mais peut-elle contribuer �� rallumer une flamme qui br��le bien au-del�� de trois semaines de comp��tition, en recr��ant un ��cosyst��me footballistique��par et pour la moyenne des Africains, sur le continent, sans continuer d���imaginer son succ��s �� travers l���exportation incessante et mal r��mun��r��e de ses talents vers la machine aspirante du football n��olib��ral, inf��od�� �� une qu��te sans fin de plus de revenus.

From air travel costs and border regimes to television culture and class exclusion, the problem of attendance at AFCON is structural, not because fans lack passion.The closing ceremony of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, Rabat, January 18, 2025. Image: CAF (Facebook), used under fair use.

Lire en fran��ais ici.

Although Senegal���s AFCON final victory against Morocco drew a full crowd, the tournament confirmed a persistent reality. Outside of host-nation matches, stadiums stands remained sparse. With twenty-four teams competing, representing nearly half of Africa���s nations, one might have expected significant traveling support for each country���s games. Yet, even with impeccable organization and world-class facilities, attendance remained sparse, revealing deeper, systemic issues that extend well beyond sport.

This phenomenon is not new. In Egypt (2019), to fill empty stands, organizers had recourse to soldiers dressed in team colors (BBC Sport, 2019). The sparse stands that television production cannot hide are a recurring characteristic of many AFCON matches.

The 2023 edition in C��te d’Ivoire, however, had raised hopes for a lasting change. Stadiums were full, filled with a festive atmosphere of songs and dances. But this success appears to have been a��contextual mirage, out of exceptional circumstances. These include C��te d’Ivoire’s unique geography and demography, located at the heart of West Africa and ECOWAS, which benefited from the presence of strong diasporas from neighboring countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Guinea), many of whom were qualified. In addition, regional mobility, with an integrated road network and affordable inter-state transport, enabled an influx of supporters by land, an option virtually non-existent for a country like Morocco, politically landlocked by its visa policies vis-��-vis most African nations, yet paradoxically more accessible to European tourists.

Two years later, the return to reality in Morocco proves that perfect technical organization is not enough. The crucial Senegal-Egypt semi-final did not sell out. The problem appears to be systemic.

The vitality of a major sporting tournament depends on fans’ ability to travel. In Africa, however, this mobility is hindered by colossal structural barriers. Air travel is prohibitively expensive in Africa.��Intra-African flights are among the most expensive in the world. As noted by Lise-Marie Kesby in a BBC article, a trip of similar distance costs��3 to 5 times more��in Africa than in Europe, with multiple layovers and multiplied durations. For a large part of the African middle class, following their team by air is utopian.

Beyond the continent’s vast geography and immense distances, overland travel across national borders in Africa remains a significant challenge. Although the continent’s road infrastructure has improved significantly, highway networks are still not fully developed. Furthermore, transnational road and rail connections are hindered by slow and complex administrative procedures at political borders.

As a result, while a journey between neighboring West African capitals like Abidjan and Ouagadougou is feasible, traveling from Lagos to Rabat (5,473 km) or from Kinshasa to Casablanca (7,680 km) represents a logistical, financial, and often security-related expedition that is virtually unimaginable for the average football fan wishing to attend the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).

The socio-economic context is unfavorable and affects the vast majority of the African population.��With economies mostly classified as lower-middle or low-income and high youth unemployment, the potential public able to bear these costs shrinks drastically. Travelling to attend AFCON thus becomes an affair for an economic elite and a diaspora benefiting from strong currencies, sometimes cheaper airfare, and more regular flights from Paris, Brussels, London, etc.

Beyond logistical obstacles, a more fundamental question emerges: is African football still rooted in the daily lives of Africans? As Lamine Harlem analyses in��Africa Is a Country, the true popular success of AFCON is measured less by stadium attendance than by its audience��outside��the stadium. The screens of caf��s, restaurants, and homes across the continent have taken over. These social hubs, exemplified by the now-omnipresent “sports bars,” symbolize a well-established football culture in Africa. While not the direct cause of sparse stands, they reveal a symptom. The collective match experience has largely shifted from the stadium to the screen, with real implications for African football.

Since the 1990s, satellite television has displaced the heart and identities of African football. Entire generations have grown up idolizing Bar��a, Real Madrid, or Manchester United, consuming the Premier League or La Liga every weekend via beIN Sports, Canal+, or SuperSport. Even though African players have greatly contributed to this anchoring, this constant exposure has, over the decades, led to a��cultural alienation, which can also be theorized as electronic colonialism. Local leagues, perceived as disorganized and of poor quality, have been neglected.

The modern African football fan���s identification and emotional life have largely shifted toward European clubs, experienced through screens. This has left African national teams serving mainly as conduits for sporadic, tournament-driven patriotism, very intense during the AFCON but not strong enough to draw crowds for a match like Mali vs. Congo, with fewer known European-based players.

AFCON remains a major media event, as evidenced by its rising TV rights. It sparks real passion, but one that is increasingly��televisual and sporadic. To reverse the trend of empty stands, improving ticketing, beautiful stadia, and CAF’s higher revenues will not suffice. It will require tackling structural continental challenges that fall to states and the public or private decision-makers of football governance.

Consumption and participation in the sporting spectacle depend on mobility infrastructure, such as affordable air travel and fast, safe road and rail networks. Let us dream of an Africa free of crises, crossed by high-speed trains (TGVs), highways, and low-cost flights.

Meanwhile, African football requires a��profound reevaluation of local championships��to recreate a weekly link between fans and their��local football, rebuilding identities rooted in the local ecosystem. Investing and reinvesting��financially, socially, and humanely in grassroots football, its community infrastructure, and its human resources, to re-root the culture of the game.

In the meantime, AFCON will continue, every two years (then every four years), to offer an intense but brief emotional fireworks display. But can it help revive a flame that burns far beyond three weeks of competition? The question remains: can it contribute to recreating a football ecosystem by and for the average African on the continent, without continuing to imagine its success through the incessant, poorly compensated export of its talents to the aspirational machine of neoliberal football, subservient to an endless quest for more revenue? Only time will tell.

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.Senegal lift the Africa Cup of Nations trophy after defeating Morocco in Rabat, January 18, 2025. Image: CAF Instagram, used under fair use.

Youssou N���Dour���s ���Gaind����� is the perfect music to listen to during a trophy ceremony. It is rhythmic, uplifting, and irresistibly catchy.

That���s what I was thinking to myself as it blared through the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium sound system and confetti cannons blasted golden ribbons into the rainy Rabat night. Moments later, Sadio Man�� lifted the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in front of the photographer corps furiously clicking their shutters, immortalizing the 35th champion of our continent���s flagship tournament.

To be honest, the rest of the night feels like a fever dream. I only remember flashes burned into my mind like overexposed film.

I do remember that Senegal were largely in control in the early stages of the match, building play with the quiet maturity of a team fully aware of its own capabilities. The Teranga Lions circulated possession patiently, trusting their structure and timing. Morocco sat in a mid-bloc that appeared organized but was nonetheless porous, allowing Senegal to find pockets between the lines and advance with measured confidence.

The hosts adjusted after the break. Their bloc tightened and Morocco began snapping into 50/50s with increased aggression. They threatened through set pieces and quick counters, turning the match into a series of momentum swings. After trading body blows for 90 minutes, both teams seemed resigned to extending the battle into extra time.

The next distinct memory came at the moment that should have ended it.

In the 92nd minute, Senegal won a corner. The delivery was perfect for Abdoulaye Seck, who swiped at the outstretched arms of Achraf Hakimi before their bodies collided. Seck���s header crashed against the goalpost. The rebound was scrambled into the net���pandemonium���only for Congolese referee Jean-Jacques Ndala to blow his whistle and signal a foul on Seck.

It was soft. Technically defensible, perhaps. Barely.

Minutes later, on a corner at the other end, Malick Diouf pulled Brahim D��az to the ground. This time, Ndala initially kept his whistle down���until a VAR check intervened. Penalty. It was probably the correct decision, but correctness offered no comfort to Senegalese players or supporters who felt injustice had already been served.

Cue mayhem.

Behind the goal, the Senegalese supporters known as the 12��me Ga��nd�� (���Twelfth Lion���) lost all composure. Projectiles rained onto the pitch. Chairs followed. Fists flew. What began as protest turned feral, as if something sacred had been violated, as if families themselves were under threat.

In the middle of it all, one man stood tall: Sadio Man��.

The former Liverpool forward defied the team���s initial decision to forfeit the match. Instead, he walked to the touchline and spoke with Claude Le Roy and El Hadji Diouf. Then he turned to his teammates and convinced them to return to the pitch, asserting simply: ���We will play like men.���

Not long after Man�� led Senegal back onto the field, D��az stepped up to the penalty spot. A goal would be his sixth of the tournament, enough to tie the record for a Moroccan player at AFCON and, more importantly, virtually guarantee Morocco a second continental title.

In a moment of total madness, a visibly tense D��az attempted a panenka. ��douard Mendy read it all along and caught the ball with utter ease. Extra time.

Before the additional periods began, Man�� walked over to the 12��me Ga��nd��, hands raised, urging calm and asking them to stand behind the team. His message landed. And soon after, Pape Gueye embarked on a lung-busting 40-yard run that ended with a beautifully struck shot that finally beat Yassine Bounou.

Morocco huffed and puffed, but they could not equalize.

Senegal were champions again.

Man�� fell to his knees. This most extraordinary of matches had delivered him a second AFCON title – no non-Egyptian player has won more. To place the achievement in context, Man�� was also named Best Player in both of his AFCON triumphs, something even Samuel Eto���o never managed. Eto���o, widely regarded as the greatest African footballer of all time, finished his international career with 56 goals. Man�� now has 53 and, at this rate, will surely surpass that mark within the year.

But numbers feel inadequate after a night like this. Man�����s status will definitely rise for what he did on the pitch, but also just as much for his refusal to disappear when the game turned hostile.

As ���Gaind����� echoed once more through the stadium and the gold confetti littered the emerald pitch in Rabat, Senegal didn���t just celebrate a victory. They celebrated a leader that understood that greatness is not only about winning, but about how you behave when the world is on fire.

From national redemption and continental dominance to personal legacy and political ambition, the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations final means everything to Africans.Vieux Ciss�� and Marouane Louadni during the CHAN 2024 semi-final between Senegal and Morocco, August 26, 2025, Kampala, Uganda. Image: CAF.

What���s in an Africa Cup of Nations final?

For Morocco, a chance at long-awaited continental glory. Since 1976 when the Ahmed Faras��� Atlas Lions lifted the Cup, generations of superstars have come and gone without winning Africa���s most coveted trophy. Aziz Bouderbala, Mustapha Hadji, Hakim Ziyech have shone at the FIFA World Cup, but all have failed to add a second star on Morocco���s red jerseys. As Walid Regragui, Morocco���s head coach, once put it: ���You cannot be kings of the world if you are not kings of your continent.���

For Senegal, this final is about confirming supremacy. The Teranga Lions boast one of the strongest squads on the planet, with players that have competed at the very highest level. They have been the benchmark on African soil in recent memory. Sunday evening will mark their third Africa Cup of Nations final in four editions. Even if they are to lose to Morocco, one fact remains true: At the 2027 AFCON in East Africa, Senegal will enter the tournament not having been eliminated from an AFCON by anyone other than the eventual champions in a decade.

The last time Senegal lifted the trophy, in 2021, Macky Sall was president, governing in what would soon harden into an increasingly unpopular and embattled tenure. This final unfolds under very different political skies. The early years of the Bassirou Faye era have been marked by popular expectations of renewal and restored dignity, a mood echoing wider regional currents.The national team���s sustained excellence offers a parallel register of continuity and confidence, and an image of a country that believes it belongs at the summit, whether on the pitch or beyond it.

For Achraf Hakimi, Africa���s reigning Player of the Year, the final offers a chance to focus on sport. Amid ongoing legal proceedings in France, where he has been accused of rape, the Paris Saint-Germain fullback can become a national hero at home, where his legal issues are mostly ignored.

Meanwhile, for Sadio Man��, winning the final is a chance to cement himself amongst Africa���s greatest ever players. The Bambali native is a former African Footballer of the Year, runner-up in the 2019 Ballon d���Or, and currently seventh on the all-time list of African international goalscorers. His CV demands reverence and that will come with a second AFCON title.

For Man�����s teammate and captain, Kalidou Koulibaly, this final will be watched from the stands. The match will be his second absence from an AFCON final after also missing the 2019 showpiece through suspension. In 2021, he lifted the trophy after collecting it on behalf of his teammates; on Sunday night, he will hope to do so again. Then, it was presented by Paul Biya, the oldest head of state to host an AFCON. This time, history could tilt the other way, with Morocco���s Crown Prince Moulay Hassan poised to hand over the title should Senegal win.

For Regragui, one of African football���s most compelling modern figures, an AFCON trophy would be a coronation of a decade of hard work. In 2016 he was cutting his teeth with a mid-sized club in Morocco hoping to one day lead his national team to this stage. He���s a coach who blends tactical clarity with cultural confidence, and who has helped redefine how African teams see themselves on the global stage.

Pape Thiaw, the Senegalese coach, is his counterpart. Once dismissed as an ���intern��� after Aliou Ciss�����s contract was not renewed, he inherited an impossible comparison: a predecessor who lost just 14 of his 101 matches in charge. Thiaw now stands one win away from silencing all doubt in his appointment and proving that he deserves a chance to lead Senegal at the 2026 FIFA World Cup next summer.

Behind the scenes looms Fouzi Lekjaa, the astute and machiavellian president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation and Morocco���s Minister of Budget. For Lekjaa, victory would be another strategic triumph in his long-term vision, one that fuses sporting ambition with diplomacy, infrastructure, and influence, and has reshaped Moroccan football���s place in Africa and beyond.

For one of the GenZ212 activists I spoke to, the final is conflicting. She explained in great detail how she���ll refuse to attend any matches at the 2025 AFCON out of solidarity with her fellow protestors who faced judicial harassment for demanding better education and healthcare.

Finally, for us journalists, the least important group of people attending the final, tonight is the final sprint after a month of relentless work: deadlines, analysis, late nights. We publish, we post, we debate and we cherish the privilege of witnessing another chapter of African football history from the inside.

For Africa? One final chance to turn on our television sets and, as a continent, share in a sporting moment together.

What���s in the 2025 AFCON final?

Everything.

Why focusing on attendance figures at the 2025 AFCON is the wrong way to measure the tournament.Michel Nkuka Mboladinga, a DR Congo fan impersonating Patrice Lumumba, during the Africa Cup of Nations in Rabat, Morocco. Image credit Mosa'ab Elshamy via AP.

Reading the Africa Cup of Nations through its stands alone means missing what it produces socially. The stands give the tournament a visible form, but they offer only a partial account of how the tournament is lived. The stands bring together, in a single place, gestures that give meaning to the tournament. Michel Kuka Mboladinga���s performance, which reproduced the posture of Lumumba, is a striking illustration of this. Such a scene resonates because it condenses, in a single moment, a political memory and a sporting event. The stadium offers a stage to gestures that then take on a different dimension. It concentrates, and makes legible what would otherwise remain diffuse.

This is why the stands continue to occupy a central place in how a tournament is perceived, evaluated, and judged. But a decisive part of the tournament���s experience unfolds in more ordinary spaces, where engagement takes other forms. In caf��s, public spaces, and informal settings, often well before the question of going to the stadium even arises. A recent study by the Sunergia Group shows that a large majority of the public in Morocco did not buy a ticket for AFCON, while still remaining engaged with the tournament. This figure is often read as a sign of distance or lack of interest. It deserves a more nuanced reading. As soon as we look at everyday practices on the ground, the picture changes.

During the quarter-final between Algeria and Nigeria, the match is broadcast on the televisions of a restaurant. Plates arrive. The meal and the match unfold together. Watching AFCON does not require changing place or breaking with routine. The tournament inserts itself into existing practices, into temporalities already shaped by work, family, and everyday sociability. For many, this is the most suitable form of engagement, allowing a continuous collective experience, requiring neither displacement nor disruption.

Sparse stands, when read through television images alone, tell us very little about the tournament���s place in society. A Zimbabwean professor who recently settled in Tangier explains it to me simply, ���I work until 9 pm.��� The same answer comes from my mototaxi driver, Mouhcin, when I ask whether he has attended a match at the stadium. He answers with a single word: ���work.��� These responses express neither rejection nor disengagement. Both tell me they follow the matches with interest. These answers point instead to ordinary trade-offs, to everyday priorities. Absence from the stands, on its own, says nothing about the intensity of attention given to the tournament. The stadium thus becomes a possible step, but not a necessary one. The stadium is no longer the natural entry point into engagement and is now part of a broader set of practices and trajectories. Public space, too, extends this experience.

At Bab El Had Square in Rabat, collective celebrations emerge after matches. Most are improvised, and people gather there implicitly. Mobilization takes shape because the place and the moment allows it. The public gathers and sings, and vendors circulate. After the final whistle, the match continues in the city. These scenes are not captured by statistics and ticketing figures and broadcast audiences are not designed to capture these forms of engagement. Yet these scenes produce a shared memory, made of collective celebrations. Major football tournaments leave us primarily with memories. They unfold as much in the stands as in urban landscapes, often less during the match itself than in what precedes and extends beyond it. After Senegal���s 1���0 victory over Mali at the Grand Stade of Tangier, rain is falling. The percussionists leave the stands and settle in the exit corridors. An improvised concert begins. People stop, gather, dance. They sing Senegal���s qualification for the semifinals. Celebration spills beyond the planned framework and gives rise to new forms of celebration that take root in the margins. The memory of the tournament is built there, in these interstices.

The stands remain central. This is where certain images condense, where certain gestures become visible before entering the tournament���s memory. At the same time, they no longer constitute the natural entry point of engagement for a growing part of the public. The AFCON experience is fragmented. It is distributed across the stadium, caf��s, public space, transport, and the scenes and moments of communion before, during, and after the match. This fragmentation is a central feature that needs to be accounted for.

Understanding the real impact of a tournament like AFCON requires looking beyond standard indicators of attendance and broadcast audiences. Close attention to lived experience, to everyday uses, and to ordinary choices becomes necessary. Otherwise, a decisive part of what the tournament produces socially remains out of view. The stands do not tell the whole story. Much of what gives AFCON its social meaning unfolds beyond them.

The rivalry between Sadio Man�� and Mohamed Salah pushed them to unprecedented heights, but also links two seemingly distant and disconnected villages.Mohamed Salah receives the Player of the Year award with runner-up Sadio Mane, from Youssou Ndour during the CAF awards in Dakar, 2019. EPA/STR via Shutterstock.

The best thing about the Africa Cup of Nations is its ability to shrink our vast continent. It spins connections between places assumed to be distant and disconnected, only to reveal how deeply Africans are bound by shared dreams and struggles.

The semi-final of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations between Senegal and Egypt does precisely that, drawing an unlikely line from Bambali, Senegal, to Nagrig, Egypt. Until recently, both villages were unknown even to most Senegalese and Egyptians, let alone the wider footballing world. It was only with the rise of their most famous sons, Sadio Man�� and Mohamed Salah, into global stardom that their names began to circulate beyond borders.

Bambali and Nagrig could almost be twin villages. Bambali sits quietly in Senegal���s lower Casamance, near the border with Guinea-Bissau. Nagrig lies forgotten in the Nile Delta, suspended between Cairo and Alexandria. In Bambali, they grow rice and mangoes; in Nagrig, jasmine and onions.

In parallel, Man�� and Salah share so many similarities that they feel like kindred spirits. Both were born in 1992 into modest families in remote agricultural communities. Both were forced to leave home early to pursue the improbable dream of becoming professional footballers. As adolescents, Man�� slipped away unannounced to Dakar for trials, while Salah endured four-hour bus journeys each way to Cairo, day after day, just for a chance. Perhaps it is because they share so much that the two grew into such fierce rivals.

Make no mistake: the respect between Man�� and Salah is genuine. Their relationship remains cordial. But at Liverpool Football Club, their competitive instincts often collided. Man�� arrived first and, in his debut season, claimed the right flank as his own, quickly becoming a fan favourite. A year later The Egyptian King arrived and his immediate impact was so overwhelming that Man�� was shifted to the left – a position he would eventually master just as convincingly.

Over the next five years, the pair combined to produce some of the finest attacking football of the modern era. Yet there were moments when ego and frustration took hold, when passes went unmade and tempers flared. One such moment against Burnley in 2019 became infamous. Salah ignored a wide-open Man�� who would have scored with ease. Minutes later, J��rgen Klopp substituted Man��. Furious, Man�� erupted at the decision, at the selfishness, at the moment.

But what truly fractured Man�����s relationship with Liverpool came later. After Senegal���s historic Africa Cup of Nations triumph in early 2022���the first in the nation���s history���Man�� returned a demigod at home. He had scored the winning penalty in the final. Salah never even got the chance to take one.

Man�� 1���0 Salah.

While Senegalese players at other clubs were granted time off and welcomed back with guards of honor, Liverpool chose restraint, wary of upsetting Salah, whose Egypt had lost the final.

Months later, the two met again in a 2022 World Cup qualifier, once more decided by penalties. In a deafening Diamniadio stadium, green laser pointers dancing across his face, Salah stepped up. He missed. Man�� scored.

Man�� 2���0 Salah.

It is therefore inevitable that the semi-final of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Tangier will be reduced to a single journalistic narrative: Mohamed Salah vs Sadio Man��. The framing is obvious, but that does not mean it should be avoided. Man�� vs Salah may well be the greatest rivalry between two African footballers since Drogba vs Eto���o, though this one carries a sharper edge.

Salah has more to gain. He is still chasing his first AFCON title, a prize already claimed by peers such as Man�� and Riyad Mahrez. Man��, meanwhile, has the chance to tilt the balance decisively in his favor.

On Wednesday afternoon, I will watch Egypt vs Senegal with a close eye on the performances of the former teammates. The storytelling potential of the fixture is spellbinding. Yet beyond the headlines, narratives, and tension on the pitch, what remains in front of mind is that the true winners of Man�� vs Salah are two African villages that might otherwise have been forgotten.

As European football continues to extract African talent, economic benefits at the grassroots level rarely come through transfer fees. G��n��ration Foot, Man�����s boyhood academy, earned only a few hundred thousand dollars from transfer deals that ultimately totaled nearly $100 million. Arab Contractors, Salah���s former club, earned even less for the greatest footballer Egypt has ever produced. In the absence of fair compensation systems, the real financial windfall has come from personal generosity.

In June 2021, Man�� oversaw the construction of a medical center in Bambali, serving 34 surrounding communes, at an estimated cost of $610,000. His motivation was deeply personal.

���The day my father died, I was seven years old,��� Man�� recounts in the Made in Senegal documentary. ���He had a stomachache, but there was no hospital. We tried traditional medicine. They took him to another village and he died there.���

Surrounded by local officials, Man�� cut the ribbon at the hospital entrance. A bolted plaque reads: ���The Bambali Hospital was funded and inaugurated by Mr. Sadio Man��, Senegalese international footballer���Bambali, June 20, 2021.���

Salah has followed a similar path in Nagrig, investing in medical infrastructure, donating an ambulance centre and funding a sports complex. In 2022, The Times reported that Salah gives up to 6% of his salary to charitable causes every month.

It should not be incumbent upon footballers to provide healthcare, sanitation, and education for their own villages. Yet across much of Africa, this remains the reality. Poor governance creates gaps that are too often filled by celebrity benefactors. And frequently, the first to arrive and celebrate these acts are the very politicians who presided over the neglect.

In that sense, the rivalry between Man�� and Salah is about far more than goals, medals, or legacy. It is about how two journeys, from Bambali and Nagrig, to the continental stage, continue to reshape the lives of those at home.