Africa Is a Country

Wayne Rooney and a rhinoceros

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Wayne Rooney and a rhinoceros

By
Elliot Ross

The ultimate preview of the 2013 Afcon Final: Will it be Stephen Keshi's time or can the Burkinabé shock the world in Soweto?

Outside Soccer City, site of the 2013 Afcon final (Image by Matthew Perkins, via Flickr CC).

Nineteen years ago, a Super Eagles team captained by one Stephen Okechukwu Keshi won the Africa Cup of Nations in Tunis. Will it be Keshi’s time again in Soweto today? We leave the serious predictions to the professionals. Check out the latest from BBC reporter Peter Okwoche (we love him) who staged a pre-final prediction match between a bunch of kids. The video is cute, but we’re suspicious that  Team Nigeria seemed to get all the bigger kids. Where was the Sowetan Burkinabés version of Dagano? Anyway, the game ended with an assured 3-1 victory for Nigeria, but then what would you expect from a game set up by a reporter named Okwoche? Watch it here.

Others aren’t so sure about the Super Eagles chances. Top football analyst Michael Cox has detailed tactical analysis (well worth reading to get a sense of where today’s game will be won and lost) of both teams’ semi-final victories, Burkina’s over Ghana and Nigeria’s over Mali. Cox likes Nigeria, but on the strength of what he saw in the semis, he reckons Burkina may be the better side: “if they play with the same level of cohesion and fluidity [as they did vs Ghana], Burkina Faso will defeat Nigeria on Sunday evening.”

Cox reserves his strongest praise for Aristide Bancé, one of this blog’s favorite players at Afcon:

This was as good a centre-forward display as you’ll see in international football. Bancé was involved in everything – he sprinted in behind for chances on the counter, he had a header saved on the goal-line from a corner, he could drop deep and encourage the wide players beyond him. He even showed great defensive ability – at one point rushing back to stop a Ghana counter-attack himself, when most other forwards would have left that to the midfielders.

So look out for Burkina, and watch out for Bancé.

We’re just hearing Emmanuel Emenike won’t start the final, a big blow for the Nigerians. That man has been playing like he’s a cross between Wayne Rooney and a rhinoceros. Still, the Nigerians are confident. Is anyone surprised? Like this fan observed by Jonathan Wilson, the British football journalist: “Just seen a Nigeria fan wearing a loaf on his head, bearing the message ‘Eat them like bread’.“

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.