Johannesburg – When Morocco reached the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup, millions of people with no connection to the 1,200-year-old kingdom followed the story. It was the deepest any African side had ever gone – and the continent held its breath together.
Four years later, Africa is fielding a record 10 teams and some of football’s most recognisable stars on fields across Canada, Mexico and the US. Beyond Moroccans Achraf Hakimi and Yassine Bounou – both heroes of the 2022 World Cup run – many other African soccer players are globally influential.
Senegalese player Sadio Mané is respected for both his football achievements and philanthropy, while Nigeria’s Victor Osimhen represents a new generation of African stars. Then there is Riyad Mahrez, one of the continent’s most decorated modern players.
This is not Africa’s first turn on football’s biggest stage. In 2010, South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup, the world showed up, and the Rainbow Nation blew the Vuvuzela loud in the opening match when Bafana Bafana took on Mexico.
But Shakira’s Waka Waka became the tournament’s anthem even though the beat came from Cape Town’s Freshlyground, who added the song’s bridge, and vocals in Xhosa, and their signature Afro-fusion instrumentation such as African-inspired percussion, guitar, and flute lines.
While the world belted along – with Waka Waka eventually being downloaded 15 million times – Shakira eclipsed Freshlyground even as she sang about this time being for Africa.
Culture in our veins
Freshlyground is one band that typifies talent, skill, vibrance, and rich heritage – characteristics that are embedded in our culture from north to south and east to west. Nigerian artists Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tems and Rema top international charts. South Africa’s Tyla introduced millions to Amapiano through a single global hit.
Nigerian authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chinua Achebe are read worldwide, with Achebe’s Things Fall Apart remaining a top novel almost 70 years after he penned it. Nollywood is one of the largest film industries on earth by output. South African-born Trevor Noah took African perspectives to American primetime.
These are not niche success stories. They are mainstream, global, and growing.
More importantly, they demonstrate that audiences around the world are already engaging with African stories, talent and creativity. The challenge is that those stories are often consumed as individual successes rather than as part of a broader narrative about the continent itself as they are almost always told in isolation.
Burna Boy is a Nigerian artist. Tyla is a South African singer. Mohamed Salah is an Egyptian footballer. Their achievements reflect positively on their home countries but rarely are they framed as part of a broader African story.
In their own right
The emotional power of African talent is captured market by market, country by country, while Africa as a continent is not seen as a brand. This changes when our players run onto the field.
Watching soccer – that beautiful game – together in venues across Africa fills us with a sense of belonging. Each time one of our – and we should and do claim all African footballers as ours – crosses into the opposing side’s half, we are filled with optimism.
The question is whether we can take that instinct, that pride, and that sense of belonging off the pitch and turn those feelings that brands across the globe will pay billions for into something that advances Africa as a whole.
The World Cup offers a rare opportunity to change that.
Own the continental brand
A unified African narrative would not replace national identities or achievements but rather connect them. With a record 10 teams competing, the tournament creates a platform on which audiences can celebrate not only individual nations, but a continent increasingly producing world-class talent.
Rather than building campaigns around individual countries, brands could tap into themes that resonate across borders: achievement, ambition, creativity, excellence. The opportunity is not simply to celebrate football success, but to tell a larger story about Africa’s growing presence on the world stage.
If the tournament helps create even a small shift from “my country is succeeding” to “Africa is succeeding”, it could become one of the most powerful brand-building moments the continent has seen.
Not by treating Africa as a single market, but by recognising the pride, aspiration and sense of possibility that increasingly connect audiences across its borders. Africa has never lacked talent, creativity or ambition.
What it has often lacked is a stage large enough to showcase them all at once. The World Cup may be one of those rare moments well beyond the final whistle. That conversation continues in Livingstone, Zambia, from 23 to 25 September, where we host some of the world’s top marketers – and showcase the seventh wonder of the world, the Victoria Falls, the Smoke That Thunders, Mosi-oa-Tunya – as we reposition Brand Africa.
