We are going to witness a roaring final! Atlas Lions against Teranga Lions. The epilogue of the African Cup of Nations, the 35th edition. While waiting to see if the Moroccans will follow in the footsteps of the Ivorians, by winning the CAN that they organized, this edition is a good vintage, in the opinion of African football fans.
But all eyes are already on the United States. Supporters of the Elephants and Lions of Teranga will not have the right to the stands of American stadiums. Trump has decided so! Discrimination that resembles stigma. Trump and Africa It’s really not getting any better. However, by getting involved in bringing peace to the DRC and crusading for the Christians of Nigeria, he gave the impression of contrition. From a regret of having treated Africa as “ Shithole countries », shitty country. Ultimately no! Shit doesn’t bother him that much when it comes to Nigeria’s oil and the immense minerals of the Congolese subsoil.
On the lands of Lucy, the ancestor of humanitymoments of joy being rare, let’s still get drunk with this beautiful Moroccan edition. This final is a beautiful derby of the Africas, as the founding fathers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) dreamed of. With the Casablanca group, it was on Sherifian lands that African progressives had dreamed of the United States of Africa since 1961.
Trump’s decision to restrict visas for supporters highlights Africa’s political downgrade
This great Africa, of which Mohammed V, Kwamé Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser had dreamed, which should go from Rabat to Cape Town, in South Africa, is today in very bad shape. She can, thus, be the laughing stock of Trump and his compulsive decrees. But it would be wise to pay attention to the groundswell that is surging in this Africa which doubts but which is convinced, more than ever, that it is the continent of the future. Of course “ a dream does not come true through magic, it requires sweat, perspiration and hard work ”, to quote Colin Powell. Challenges that are not at all frightening on a continent where we know what “ the sweat of work (…) the back streaked by the rays of the sun » mean, as declaimed with ardor, by the Senegalese poet Birago DiopIn Africa my Africa.
So as not to distance ourselves from football, in the wake of the CAN in Morocco, we will have noticed the absence of major African media. In any case, not up to the challenge which CANs increasingly take on. We then think again, to regret, that the New World Communication Order, which this other Senegalese, Amadou Matar Mbow, former director general of UNESCO, had dreamed of in the 1980s, has still not come true. Where have the big media, Africa n°1, the PANA agency gone? There is a void to fill.
CAN has grown. It’s a good business card of this Africa, the continent of the future. For this reason, we must rethink mainstream media for Africa. The best way, more generally, to counter this dynamic which reduces, almost everywhere, the information horizon to stories roughly controlled by small “ pravda » governmental. In saying this, I think of the umpteenth censorship which has just fallen this week on Jeune Afriquein the AES.
The CAN was beautiful. Let’s hope that the finale keeps the promises of all these dithyrambs that we hear from here and there. Come on, Lions! Make us vibrate!
