The African Football Development Model

Eugene Augustus “Gusty” Cooper, Jr.
African Governance and Economics
Naval War College

Abstract

The world usually looks at the African countries as unequal, third-world partners; on the football pitch, the African states take a back seat to no one.  This paper explores the relationship between African football, African governments, African society, and African economics.  Football is Africa’s national pastime[1], but the national football associations and the local football clubs are sometimes plagued with symptoms similar to those found in the African governments – corrupt leaders, inadequate training facilities, lack of funding, disputes between ethnic football clubs, and the extraction of Africa’s best players to the European leagues.  Despite these obstacles, Africans compete as equals on the world football stage – going to the quarterfinals of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) world cup, winning FIFA junior world cups, and winning Olympic gold medals.  This paper provides a brief background on sport and football in Africa, and in doing so extracts an African Football Development Model.  The African Football Development Model is then used as a tool to demonstrate future examples for African countries to better themselves in governance, economics, social aspects, and integration into the international community.  Application of the Football Development Model in future African development efforts can potentially affect the following liberal tradition[2] aspects: improved multiparty democracies, more volunteer associations in the African societies, better ethnic relationships, more gender equality, better elite / working class relationships, improved socioeconomic development, and a reduction in illicit non-state actors.

Introduction
Africa has a tremendously long history – much longer than football has been a part of Africa.  This paper briefly describes the early beginnings of football in Africa, but its concentration is on the period from the 1950’s to present.  This is when the African states achieved their independence; established (and re-established) their governments, economies, and societies; and forged their tenuous inclusion into the international community.   This period has not been kind to the new African countries as a few simple statistics reveal: (1) Africa’s GNP per capita is $528 and the industrialized countries’ is $28,086[3], (2) Africa has 22 of the 24 states that the United Nations Development Program characterizes as Low Human Development[4] , and (3) there have been 188 attempted and 372 planned military coups during this period.[5] 

From the 1950’s to the present, African states have achieved equality on the football pitch despite their overall struggles in national and international development.  As Cameroon’s World Cup victory demonstrates, the game can have both positive and negatives effects on Africans and on African countries.  Football can be a source of national and continental pride and of economic advancement; it can be a source of personal dreams and personal fitness.  Football can also be a source of  corruption and human trafficking.  Even with these possibilities, are sports in general and football in particular really relevant in the future of African states as they continue their integration into the global community?  I believe the answer is yes, but a more important lesson can be learned by first observing how the African states navigated the international football politics to achieve equality, extracting the Football Development Model from this history, and then demonstrating how this model can be applied to future development.

Governments, Football, and Sports Platitudes
Almost every country plays football and other sporting events, but typically one does not think of them as important aspects in governance.  Governments exists primarily to promote an environment where all of its citizens enjoy life, feel safe, live healthy, have a place to live, have enough to eat, have meaningful employment, and participate in social activities that result in community and national pride.  From an economic and employment aspect, sports can be a major governmental contributor.  Consider the following examples of 2008 sports-related revenues: Adidas and Nike reported revenues of $16.2 billion and $18.6 billion[6]; and the European football market had revenues of $23 billion[7].  These astounding revenue numbers can be contrasted to the fact that in 2008, only 15 African states had a GDP higher that $15.6 billion.[8]  Likewise, sports and football can be influential in the social and individual living aspects.  Right from its beginning, football was a working class game that allowed the English neighborhoods, with a multitude of industrial jobs and unions, to bond into larger entities that resulted in civic/national pride and helped the working class insert itself into the economic and political framework.[9]

This same phenomenon is occurring in Africa, and will increase as Africa’s middle class continues to grow. Participation in football provides individuals with an opportunity to set and achieve goals, maintain their personal fitness, enjoy the comradeship of teammates, and potentially, make a career of the game. Thus, even though one may not initially associate sport and football as important components of governments, the sports clichés – sport begets dreams, sport instills discipline, sport teaches organization skills, sport fosters civic involvement, sport brings disparate people together, sport maintains health, and sport is an economic activity – are indeed important to any government.  In addition to these platitude-style connections of sports and government, the remainder of this paper describes a better way in which lessons from football can be used in the future development of African nations.

Extracting the Football Development Model from African Football
In achieving equality in the international football scene between the 1950’s and present, the African countries followed a pattern for their success that can be applied to other areas of national development.  A brief history of the successful African football journey provides the background for developing the Football Development Model.

Origins of African Football – Africans like all inhabitants of the earth have participated in sport for as long as they have been here.   The ancient Egyptians played a form of baseball as early as 2400 B.C.[10],which was long before Abner Doubleday invented the American pastime.  The Nubians began wrestling as early as 1410 B.C.,[11] and their wrestling traditions are still maintained as every Nubian boy dreams of someday representing his village in a wrestling match.[12]   The early versions of African sport such as wrestling, archery, and horse racing were mostly connected to the military aspect of government.  The modern day versions of African sport are connected to the social and economics aspects of government.  Football is a modern day addition to the African sports landscape. Europe introduced football to Africa as a colonial tool that provided native Africans an avenue for activities as they moved into urban areas,[13] and as a Catholic missionary said, “to remove them from the influence of immoral dancing.”[14]   The colonial game of football has consumed the continent just like the Bantu farmers consumed the Khoisan hunter-gathers in Sub Saharan African.[15]  The fact that Africans embraced a colonial tool when the Bantu language did not have an indigenous word for ball[16] is easily explained.  The basic tenets of football – a fun game, simple rules, minimal equipment (ball, field, and goal markers), and social gatherings – appealed to the newly arriving urban Africans, and they discovered they could turn the social gatherings into their advantage in struggling with colonialism.  Right from the start, native Africans organized their own football clubs and used the sanctuary of matches to recruit people willing to resist colonialism.[17]  The organization of football clubs by native Africans frightened the Europeans, and the Europeans responded with repressive measures such as requiring the native Africans to play barefoot.[18]  A most famous example of football’s colonial resistance is the Algerian XI[19], a football team based in Tunisia that was composed of Algerians who gave up their French football leagues to support the Algerian independence movement.  The Algerian XI provided the “youth of Algeria an example of courage, rectitude, and unselfishness”[20] as they toured from 1958 to 1962 in North Africa, Europe, and Asia building a record of 39 wins, 4 losses, and 10 draws.  In addition to fighting colonialism, football was a tool in the newly independent countries.  For example, as Ghana emerged into an independent entity, President Kwame Nkrumah sent the Ghanaian national football team on an international tour to dispel European prejudices, build national confidence, and instill a sense of Ghanaian pride.[21]  Both Algeria and Ghana continue their football traditions as they qualified for the 2010 World Cup.

African Football and Football Organizations – The examples cited in the previous section demonstrate African countries using football as a tool in development, but they do not explain how the African states achieved equality on the pitch.  This history provides an effective pattern that can be copied in other venues to improve Africa’s standing in the international community.  In order to understand this history, one has to begin by understanding the organization of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).  FIFA is a large and complex organization, but the main components to understand are shown in Figure 1.[22]

Figure 1. FIFA Organization

The three layer organization consists of FIFA at the top level, which governs six continental confederations: Europe (UEFA), Asian (AFC), Africa (CAF), the Pacific Ocean Area (OFC), South America (CSF), and North / Central America (CONCACAF).  Each of the continental confederations is responsible for governing the national associations in its confederation.  FIFA has risen from its small beginnings to become a major international organization with massive financial clout. This is evident in its 2008 financial report: income was $957 million, expenses were $773 million, and equity was $902 million.[23]  As with any large, economically viable international organization, FIFA has its own self-serving interests, and it is up to the Continental Confederations and National Associations to navigate this three-tiered political landscape to ensure that their interests are also served.  Between the late 1950’s and today, CAF and the African nations successfully navigated the FIFA politics to achieve equality on the football pitch.  This is the same time period that the same African states struggled to achieve equality in the international political ‘pitch’.  This approach to success in football can be extracted as the African Football Development Model.

The African continent is united under the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF).  Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Africa convened in 1956 to establish CAF and establish the first African Cup of Nations for 1957.[24]  CAF immediately stood-up for African rights as it banned South Africa from the inaugural Cup because it would not compete with an integrated team.  Between 1957 and 1974, CAF struggled with FIFA politics as they attempted to get more African teams into the World Cup, but were continually rebuffed by European-dominated FIFA who claimed that African football was not worthy of additional entries.  During this time period, the number of countries in FIFA increased from 54 (over half from Europe) to 140 (less than a third from Europe).

Europe’s control of the FIFA presidency and executive committees received a rude awakening when João Havelange, from Brazil, challenged Sir Stanley Rous in the 1974 election.  Havelange courted the African votes by promising several items: (a) expelling the apartheid South Africa from FIFA, (b) increasing the number of teams in the World Cup to 24 with more places for Africa, (c) creating junior World Cup events for younger players and letting Africa host them, and (d) providing grassroots support for African football in the form of funding and technical training for players, coaches, and officials.  The vote was close because Sir Stanley had been a good leader, but his refusal to budge on South African apartheid saying sports and politics should not mix was his downfall.  From CAF’s initial establishment, it had opposed apartheid and with Africa’s unanimous support, Havelange won the FIFA presidency.  Havelange’s astute business senses allowed him to transform FIFA from a small organization into an international juggernaut with worldwide broadcast rights and corporate sponsors such as Coke and Adidas.  When he left the FIFA presidency in 1998, he left over $8 billion to his successor.  In return for the African support, Havelange and FIFA delivered on all of their promises.[25]

The culmination of the relationship between Africa and FIFA is FIFA’s awarding the World Cup 2010 to South Africa, but that event in itself demonstrates Africa’s ability to negotiate FIFA politics.  Just as Havelange sought the African vote, so too did Lennart Johansson of Sweden for the 1998 election.  Johansson courted the Africans with a vision that included harmony between European and African football and providing world cup revenues directly to the national football associations. CAF endorsed Johansson, but Sepp Blatter (the Swiss who was the FIFA general secretary) mounted a last minute campaign (endorsed by Havelange) that included a promise of Africa hosting the 2006 World Cup (and possibly under-the-table payments to the African national associations).  The CAF endorsement was splintered; most African countries supported Blatter, who won and is still serving as the FIFA president.  Blatter could not deliver the 2006 World Cup to South Africa, but he did for 2010. It has been a long road as Africa has achieved equality in both the football pitch and the FIFA politics.  FIFA’s advertisements for World Cup 2010 demonstrate this equality.  Their “Win in Africa with Africa” program states, “In essence, ‘Win in Africa with Africa’ is not about sending aid to Africa so much as providing the continent with the tools to progress and the skills with which it can continue its own development.”[26]  This is exactly what the African states, CAF, and the African national football associations achieved as they taught themselves how to negotiate FIFA politics to benefit both FIFA and Africa.

Grassroots Fundamentals in the Rise of African Football[27]– For any skill to be learned, adequate training must be provided.  In the case of football, FIFA, in cooperation with the national football associations, has created a wonderful system for training coaches, players, and officials.  Football has been grouped into technical skills (like dribbling, passing, and tackling), tactical skills (like team formations and controlling the midfield), and psychological skills (like being prepared to play).  Coaching these skills has been organized into various levels, where a specific set of training is provided followed by a written test and a demonstration test that results in a certification for that level, with the levels roughly corresponding to beginner through professional.  Properly trained coaches are then prepared to organize practices for beginners, intermediates, advanced, and professionals.  FIFA has organized a similar system for referees and officials.  The African associations did not solely negotiate financial aid from FIFA, but rather funding support that included establishing grassroots training in the fundamentals of football throughout Africa.  This fundamental grassroots training has allowed football to prosper at all levels of African society.

Accepting Imperfection in the African Football System – Just because the African countries have gained equality on the football pitch does not mean that everything associated with African football is perfect.  Three areas require improvement: playing conditions, the pay structure of the national teams, and movement of African players to the European leagues.  The playing conditions,[28] for both practice and matches are not equal to those in Europe.  At the grassroots level, the fields are often uneven without grass.  Similar conditions exist for the club practice facilities.  The club and national stadiums are sometimes rather old and in need of repair, which has resulted in several stadium accidents.  National team pay is often below average and corrupt government officials sometimes skim the money provided by FIFA to pay national team members.  Leo Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s football chief and the nephew of President Mugabe, was voted out of office by the national association when $60,000 was discovered missing.[29]

Undoubtedly, the most noted problem is the movement of African footballers from Africa to the European leagues. This has even been characterized as human trafficking in some instances.[30]  Today’s movement of football players to improve clubs is a continuation of a trend that began in the 1870’s when English clubs employed the talented Scottish footballers.[31]   Footballers in Europe get paid considerably more than in Africa so it is natural that they would want to play there; however, there are several dubious means that underlie the movement. The FIFA compensation system for clubs loosing players is not dishonest, but it is the starting point from which dishonesty originates.  In order to compensate a club for training elite players, FIFA’s rules stipulate that the recipient club pays a transfer fee to the club losing the player.  For rich European clubs, the transfer fee for marquee players is high.  Once Africa demonstrated some football prowess, the European clubs looked to Africa for inexpensive talent.  This practice was compounded by the success of African youth teams (African teams have won 5 of the 12 U-17 World Cups[32] ).  European clubs established a presence in Africa in the form of football academies with the main purpose of pilfering African football talent.  Unfortunately, with this came unscrupulous agents who would make sweet promises of European contracts to young players not talented enough to make the grade – the success rate of African footballers in Europe is 20 percent.[33]  These players’ families would pay the agents, who would find transportation to Europe with a hoped for club try-out, which often ended badly, leaving the young player living on the streets without a proper visa for the European country.  It is these cases that are sometimes referred to as human trafficking.  All of these problems are the natural growing pains in developing a football base, and they can be overcome with time and funding.  In fact, the transfer fee paid to an African club is often a major source of income for the club.  Also, FIFA ended the transfer of minors and the Bosman ruling[34] helped the players by allowing them to play to the end of their contract and move to another club without imposing a transfer fee.  African football has fared well despite these imperfections.

The African Football Development Model – This subsection concisely summarizes the African Football Development Model so that it can be used in a later section to construct future examples of how it can and cannot be used.  The African football teams established themselves as equals on the football pitch by following the following formula.

Stand together for a common cause.  African countries comprise 25% of the world’s states.  By using their collective identity along with other countries in a similar position, they create tremendous bargaining power.

Locate an economically capable international forum whose self-interests can be expanded through negotiations that also expand the African self-interests.

Ensure that the negotiations with the international community establish grass roots programs that train individuals in the basic skills necessary to perform the overall tasking.  Let these basic skills permeate throughout the culture.

Accept some imperfection in the resulting relationships, but do not succumb to imperialism.

Be focused on the long-term results.

Football Rankings and Government Rankings
This section compares the African FIFA ranking to three other African rankings: GDP per Capita ranking, the African Governance Index ranking, and the Failed State Index ranking.  Table 1 lists the African countries in alphabetical order, and depicts the four rankings normalized such that the African countries are ranked 1 through 53.

Table 1. African Countries and Various Rankings

The FIFA rankings are the October 2009 rankings, which were used to seed the 2010 World Cup;[35] the GDP per capita index was computed using values from an International Monetary Fund database tool;[36] the African Government Index is that created by Rotberg and Gisselquist;[37] and the failed state index is that created by the Fund for Peace organization.[38]  The exact definitions of these various rankings is not important for this discussion, and those interested may look them up using the references.  The purpose of comparing these rankings is to demonstrate that the more successful African football associations are not correlated to the most successful in the other rankings.  If this were the case, then the Football Development Model would not provide all African states with an equal opportunity in developing.  A cursory glance at Table 1 shows that there is no correlation between the FIFA ranking and the other government-oriented rankings.  Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, and Egypt are the top three FIFA rankings, but they have less than exemplary government rankings.  Likewise, Mauritius and Seychelles have great government rankings but woeful FIFA rankings.

Examples of Applying the Football Development Model
The Football Development Model has been extracted from Africa’s football history between the 1950’s and present, and comparison rankings show that the Football Development Model is independent of overall government development.  This section discusses two instances of African development in the context of the Football Development Model.  The first example examines two ongoing sports related developments, and the second example uses the climate change initiative to construct a future application of the Football Development Model.

The first example is that of two sports related programs that are not following the Football Development Model: Sport for Peace and Development International Working Group (SPDIWG) and Right to Play.  The SPDIWG has generated a report stating the standard sports-related clichés: governments should create sports policies because they empower women, include folks with disabilities, promote social inclusion, and teach conflict resolution.[39]  All of these claims are in general true, but the report does not provide a formula that actually allows the governments to accomplish them.  The Right to Play[40] organization’s mission is to improve the lives of children through the use of sport and play, and it is truly accomplishing some of the platitudes described in the SPDIWG report.  Right to Play incorporates several of the pillars of the Football Development Model.  It is a nongovernmental organization that generates funding through donations; it follows a grassroots approach; and it has selected some of the most impoverished countries to receive its help.  It does not, however, involve the African states bargaining together with an economically viable international organization.  The SPDIWG does not help Africa at all, and the Right to Play provides some assistance, but it does not empower African states to succeed.

The second example combines several ongoing international activities – climate, energy, and agriculture – into a perfect fit for the Football Development Model.  The 2009 UN Climate Conference[41] in Copenhagen generated a lot of news.  The less developed countries banded together to demand aid from the more developed ones, claiming that they will unduly suffer from climate change that the more developed countries caused.  Ethiopia and Nigeria are leading Africa’s charge in seeking $400 billion reparations from more developed countries.[42]    The more developed countries seem amenable to providing money; however, this is the wrong approach because it is simply asking for aid.

A better approach would be for the African countries to bargain collectively with more developed countries such that both sides benefit.  The more developed countries are concerned about carbon-based energy, and the Middle East (the main producer of carbon-based petroleum) is concerned about future food production.   Africa can collectively bargain with the more developed countries and the Middle East to transform itself into an equal partner that generates green energy and produces food.  Consider the following two examples that should be used as components of this bargaining: (1) The German-led consortium Desert Industrial Initiative seeks to develop wind, solar, and natural gas energy from the Sahara that can be provided to Europe via lines under the Mediterranean[43] and (2) the Saudis seek their future food needs by developing farms in Ethiopia.[44]   Africa should use the climate change shield to bargain for overall funding of these two initiatives that includes grassroots training in energy and agriculture.  The training should include college training in foreign countries to develop business and technical knowledge necessary to provide leadership, as well as establishing trade schools in local communities to develop industrial skills necessary to implement the project.  The African nations will have to accept foreign leadership and industrial skills in the early phases of development; however, both sides should agree to the gradual replacement of foreigners with Africans.  Additionally, the African nations have to accept the export of their resources (energy and food) in order to receive the initial investment and establish the long-term economic synergy. If Africa follows this Football Development Model pattern, and focuses on the longer term, Africa can become a leader and equal world partner in the areas of green energy and food production by 2035.

Summary
This paper has explored the relationship between football and the future governments of African countries.  The standard sports related platitudes – physical fitness, confidence building, uniting different social and ethnic groups, and establishing civic and national pride – are applicable to African football; however, a more important football related attribute was discovered by exploring how the African states achieved international equality on the football pitch during the same time (1950’s to present) that African countries have failed to achieve equality in the international community.  The African Football Development Model was extracted from this exploration, and it consists of African nations bargaining together with an international economic entity to advance both African and international interests.  The bargaining has to include an infusion of grassroots aid and training that allows Africa to grow its own experts in the area of interest.  The Football Development Model was used to demonstrate ongoing sports related initiatives that do not follow the model and thus will not be successful and to demonstrate a future example that could propel Africa to the forefront in green energy production and agriculture.  I am going to end this paper by reflecting upon a quote from the famous Liberian footballer, Josiah Johnson, who said, “Football is like a biscuit, you never know how it is going to break.”[45]  You can generalize Josiah’s quote by substituting “life” for “football”, in which case you have to say that from the 1950’s to present, life for the African nations has not broken so well.  But if Africa applies the Football Development Model to its future endeavors in the international community, the African nations can bootstrap themselves to equality in other development areas in the same way they did for football.

End Notes