Africa Is a Country

The World Cup and Pan-Africanism

The World Cup and Pan-Africanism

By
Sean Jacobs

"It is a kind of  nationalism that expands as your country loses." -- Chimamanda Adichie.

The writer Chimamanda Adichie once suggested the World Cup is a perfect vehicle for fostering pan-Africanism. That your nationalism expands as your country loses. In the video below (filmed in Nigeria by anthropologist Jesse Weaver Shipley) the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about she “became Ghanaian in the last World Cup [2006].”  During a World Cup, she usually support Nigeria when they’re playing. Once the team gets eliminated, she switches to the next African country still in the competition. “It is a kind of  nationalism that expands as your country loses.”

This is the short version of an argument Adichie had made earlier in an opinion piece for the (UK) Guardian about how, for her at least, Africa becomes a country during the World Cup.

So, we know who she will be supporting today when Ghana plays the United States today.

Watch.

By the way, Adichie has gotten stick in some quarters for inadvertently (?) excluding Algeria, the fifth African nation to qualify for the World Cup, from her definition of “an African football nation” in her Guardian piece.

I found the video on Chimurenga Magazine’s Pilgrimages Project. Remember: 13 writers in 12 African cities as well as one Brazilian writer blogging about their experiences watching the World Cup and at the same time writing a book about it. Standouts already: the Nigerian Fumni Iyanda and South African Nicole Turner.

About the Author

Sean Jacobs, Founder and Editor of Africa is a Country, is on the faculty of The New School and a Ford Foundation #AfricaNoFilter Fellow.

Further Reading

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The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

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A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

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