Africa Explores Diplomacy Through Football and Pan-Africanism

Morocco’s recent success at the 2022 World Cup, becoming the first African nation to reach the semifinals, sparked widespread celebration across the continent. This achievement, alongside Africa’s broader advancement, is intrinsically linked to the Pan-African movement, which has facilitated inclusion in global institutions.

With the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2026 World Cup in North America, African nations have an opportunity to collectively advocate for permanent representation in organizations like the Group of Twenty (G20) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), leveraging the global spotlight of these events.

The 1966 Strikers

The 1966 World Cup provides a compelling example of Africa utilizing strategic power and bloc voting to pursue greater representation, demonstrating the potential of Pan-Africanism to shape the continent’s integration into the global community. Nelson Mandela emphasized the power of sport to unite people, and for Africans in the 1960s, soccer served as a unifying force to advance a regional agenda within the evolving global order following a wave of African nations gaining independence.

FIFA, founded in 1904 by European soccer officials, initially did not envision Africa as a significant part of the sport. The 1966 World Cup allocation, with fifteen of sixteen slots reserved for European and Latin American/Caribbean countries, sparked discontent, as many argued it was an injustice to disadvantaged nations. In response, African nations initiated a boycott of the tournament.

Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah tasked Ghana’s Football Association president, Ohene Djan, to lead a fifteen-nation boycott. This action brought African soccer to the forefront, laid the groundwork for Sub-Saharan Africa and newly independent nations to exert global influence, and compelled FIFA to increase qualifying slots for non-European countries. The boycott underscored the growing importance of the African regional bloc in the geopolitical landscape.

Tackling Barriers with Black Political Power

A key factor in Africa’s successful boycott of FIFA was Pan-Africanism, a movement uniting people of African descent in the pursuit of shared goals like eliminating racism and colonialism. Inspired by collaboration and a shared experience, Nkrumah, a founding father of Pan-Africanism, fostered grassroots soccer diplomacy, emphasizing solidarity as the key to improving representation and inclusion.

Nkrumah’s engagement with African Americans during his time as a student at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania was crucial. He sought to understand the common struggles of Black people and identify global solutions for addressing structural racism. Subsequent interactions with leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X strengthened diaspora relations.

The US civil rights movement’s shift in identity from colonized to citizen influenced Nkrumah’s perspective. As leader of the first independent African nation south of the Sahara, he shaped thinking on African citizenship and its connection to a larger struggle rooted in a shared Black experience. This framework integrated common cultural experiences, values, and interpretations among people of African descent, influencing Africa’s conduct of international affairs, including its participation in the World Cup.

Nkrumah recognized the need to address FIFA’s barriers within a sport heavily tied to politics. Drawing from the African American experience, particularly the use of boycotts during the civil rights movement, members of the boycott viewed their actions as confronting similar barriers to integration.

All Players on the Pitch

Since FIFA’s inception, nations have used World Cup diplomacy to advance nation branding, political protest, and grassroots diplomacy. For example, at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the host country promoted an image of itself as a strong and emerging international market player. Similarly, players, countries, and institutions opposed to apartheid boycotted South Africa, leading to FIFA’s suspension of the nation in 1961.

Following the 1966 boycott, Nkrumah leveraged his platform to engage and persuade FIFA to make the World Cup more inclusive. He demonstrated smart power, influencing not only soccer but also how Africans viewed themselves within the global community. Ghana’s leadership surrounding the boycott helped reshape perceptions of Africa and its international profile.

The collective front of boycotting countries highlighted Africans’ ability to think independently and navigate Western institutions. They demonstrated their capacity to participate in global politics, utilizing tactics like regional bloc voting, collective bargaining, and political mobilization to compel change from FIFA. This challenged the notion that Africans lacked the intellectual capacity to advance their causes, and the act of confronting established institutions like FIFA underscored the importance of representation, enabling African nations to enhance their soft power through nation branding.

Pan-Africanism, as it was in the 1960s, remains a vital tool for African nations seeking to assert themselves in an era of great-power competition and to shape development across the continent.

With the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2026 World Cup, African nations can unite with the diaspora, mobilize their diplomatic corps, and propel their regional organizations to lobby for permanent representation in the G20 and UNSC. A renewed approach to African bloc engagement—involving influence from African nations and the diaspora to direct their advancement and engage in public diplomacy—would acknowledge Africa’s pivotal role in forging global peace and prosperity.

This renewed approach could also unlock new avenues for addressing global challenges like climate change, social injustice, and economic exclusion through intellectual, financial, and entrepreneurial collaboration between Africans and the diaspora. Combining Africa’s natural resources with its burgeoning youth population, supported by the African diaspora, could potentially reshape power dynamics in favor of Africa’s development. The 1966 World Cup boycott exemplified how Pan-Africanism can lead to global change.

Deneyse A. Kirkpatrick is the senior advisor at the US Department of State’s Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and an award-winning public diplomacy expert. Her previous diplomatic postings include Angola, Niger, Iraq, Brazil, and Egypt. Follow her on Linkedin. The views in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of the State Department or the US government.