Even as FIFA corruption scandals and succession intrigues of its president continue to arrest international attention, the 2015 Women’s World Cup carries on apace in Canada. Nigeria, Cameroon and Ivory Coast are the African teams that qualified for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) tournament that began on June 6 through July 5. By the time I was writing this, Cameroon had hit Ecuador six goals to zero. Nigeria had held Sweden to a three-all draw. And Ivory Coast had been hammered ten-nil by Germany. I expect that things might have changed by the time you are reading this. But the pleasures and the passions that animate male World Cup football seem to be absent on the female pitch. Perhaps, it’s because the English Premier League and Spanish La Liga, with their wide and fanatical following across the world, have just ended. While soccer traditionally remains a man’s passion, ladies’ football has in the recent years been pulling in women fans, including in Africa. However, the history of football on the continent is long and eventful as told in the book, ‘African Soccerscapes: How a Continent Changed the World’s Game’, by Peter Alegi. He describes “how Africans adopted soccer for their own reasons and on their own terms.” Soccer, a summary of the book notes, was a rare form of “national culture” in postcolonial Africa, where stadiums and clubhouses became arenas in which Africans challenged colonial power and expressed a commitment to racial equality and self-determination. “New nations staged matches as part of their independence celebrations and joined the world’s football body, FIFA. The Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF) democratized the global game through antiapartheid sanctions and increased the number of African teams in the World Cup finals,” Alegi writes. In the Eastern Africa region, Italian-American, writes that, football first came to Zanzibar islands with Europeans in the late 1870s. By the 1910s the game had become a popular urban pastime. And, “once football had filtered through Africa’s ports, it closely followed the path of railroads into the interior.” From there, as somebody colourfully describes it, football germinated into a “world of grassroots football, urban fan cultures and football nationalism.” On women’s football, Alegi observes that public culture in colonial Africa was initially dominated by men, but that did not mean that women were absent from football. “Through their work inside and outside the home and their moral support, many mothers, sisters, and wives made it possible for boys and men to play the game.” However, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that women became increasingly involved in the game as players. This saw growth and transition in the 1990s, and institutionalization in the 2000s to the present where Nigerian women rule the African ladies’ pitch. Since CAF sanctioned African Women’s Championship was first contested in 1991 Nigeria remains the most successful nation in the tournament’s history, having won a record nine titles. They have won all but two of the previous tournaments. Cameroon has been runner-up three times, including last year. Ivory Coast was the second runner-up in 2014. That is how the three nations came to represent Africa at the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup. And, while on FIFA and women, a thought has been entertained that a woman could succeed the embattled Sepp Blatter following his decision to resign shortly after winning the football body’s presidential elections. The woman is Burundian Lydia Nsekera, who, in 2013, became the first woman elected to FIFA’s executive committee. The other woman likely to join the race to replace Blatter is Moya Dodd, the Australian who also has experience on FIFA executive committee. But as the New York Times observed recently, as a black woman and an African, Nsekera represents two interesting constituencies that might be due a turn running the game. I wish her well. And if it ever comes she takes FIFA presidency in that bastion of unabashed male supremacy, it might be the best news yet out of Burundi in years.
