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As the Africa Cup of Nations kicks off in the Ivory Coast, yet another tournament will ultimately serve to fill the pockets of those already destroying the continent.
While the self-confessed obsessed (like myself) will happily take all the football we can get, at times there is a bigger picture to consider beyond sporting merit.
Though I’ve no personal connection to the Africa Cup of Nations – the biennial tournament which pits the continent’s best teams against each other – it has always been regarded as a staple of international football steeped in rich heritage.
Following the mainstream media in the UK, the focal point of interest centres on which players are jetting off from the Premier League to partake in the contest, and what shape their respective clubs will be left in over the coming weeks.
Prolific talisman Mohammed Salah vanishing for six weeks is always a major cause for trepidation among Liverpool fans, for instance. Pep Guardiola is waiting menacingly in the wings.
As teams amass for the commencement of AFCON in the Ivory Coast this weekend, a topic that is sparsely considered, however, is exactly who stands to reap the benefits commercially – and the grim irony that their interests directly clash with those of the African people.
The Pharaohs are here, nothing on their mind but the 8th 🏆🇪🇬#TotalEnergiesAFCON2023 | @EgyptNT_EN@MoSalah
— Total Energies AFCON (@TotalAFCON2023) January 10, 2024
The competition’s full name this year is the ‘TotalEnergies AFCON 2023’, meaning a western oil baron is flying the banner on a continent which is disproportionately battered by the impacts of climate change.
This is made all the more ludicrous by the fact that the originally slated June ‘2023’ timeline was delayed to January 2024. Wishing to avoid the rain season and increasingly worsening extreme weather events – linked to the growing volume of anthropogenic carbon emissions – organisers have instead opted for the winter months.
In laymen’s terms, the hydrocarbon industry is wide awake to the harm it’s causing in Africa and will take proactive efforts to create more damage without niggly complications or disruption. This latest example highlighting the relationship between fossil fuels and football, brazen as it is, merely scratches the surface of the wider problem.
