Africa Is a Country

National Pride

National Pride

By
Sean Jacobs

Cote d'Ivoire is Africa's best team at the moment. FIFA says so. Egypt, the current African champions, are second.

Emmanuel Eboue of Cote d'Ivoire, the top African team on FIFA's latest rankings (Image: Kehinde Wiley's artwork)

I’ll take any excuse to post about football. Fifa, football’s world controlling body, announced the latest rankings for world football this week. Not surprising are the top five nations: Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Uruguay and Portugal. We of course care about the African rankings.

The African teams in the top 50 are: Cote d’Ivoire (no. 16, down one place) followed by Egypt, defending African Cup of Nations Champions are 36th, down 2 places, with Ghana (37th, down 1), Burkina Faso (41th, down 1), Senegal (42nd, up 7), Nigeria (43rd, down 5), Algeria (46th) and Cameroon (48th), making up the rest of the top African teams.

My country, South Africa, is just outside the top 50: they’re 51st, down 4 places. Didn’t they draw and beat Egypt in recent African Nations Cup qualifiers eliminating the 6-time continental champions from next year’s finals? I thought that counted for something.

Kehinde Wiley’s painting of John Mensah, Samuel Eto’o and Emmanuel Eboue.

Sierra Leone (now 68th, up 24), Togo (95th, up 26) and Namibia (119th, up 24) are three of the six teams outside the top 50 who improved their position on the rankings by more than 20 places.

Sources: Here and here.

Further Reading

A power crisis

Andre De Ruyter, the former CEO of Eskom, has presented himself as a simple hero trying to save South Africa’s struggling power utility against corrupt forces. But this racially charged narrative is ultimately self-serving.

Cinematic universality

Fatou Cissé’s directorial debut meditates on the uncertain fate and importance of Malian cinema amidst the growing dismissiveness towards the humanities across the world.

The meanings of Heath Streak

Zimbabwean cricketing legend Heath Streak’s career mirrors many of the unresolved tensions of race and class in Zimbabwe. Yet few white Zimbabwean sporting figures are able to stir interest and conversation across the nation’s many divides.

Victorious

After winning Italy’s Serie A with Napoli, Victor Osimhen has cemented his claim to being Africa’s biggest footballing icon. But is the trend of individual stardom good for sports and politics?

The magic man

Chris Blackwell’s long-awaited autobiography shows him as a romantic rogue; a risk taker whose life compass has been an open mind and gift to hear and see slightly into the future.

How to think about colonialism

Contemporary approaches to the legacy of colonialism tend to narrowly emphasize political agency as the solution to Africa’s problems. But agency is configured through historically particular relations of which we are not sole authors.

More than just a flag

South Africa’s apartheid flag has been declared hate speech by a top court. But while courts are important and their judgments matter, racism is a long and internationally entrenched social phenomenon that cannot be undone via judicial processes.

Resistance is a continuous endeavor

For more than 75 years, Palestinians have organized for a liberated future. Today, as resistance against Israeli apartheid intensifies, unity and revolutionary optimism has become the main infrastructure of struggle.