Africa has never featured very prominently in the history of the World Cup. Neither its teams nor its people have enjoyed much success at any of the past 18 tournaments, and coming into the 2010 edition, the world didn’t really expect that to change.
Africa has never featured very prominently in the history of the World Cup. Neither its teams nor its people have enjoyed much success at any of the past 18 tournaments, and coming into the 2010 edition, the world didn’t really expect that to change.
But Africa failed to prove the world wrong when at the first World Cup in Africa, five out of six African teams the most at any World Cup were eliminated in the first round of the tournament.
Only Ghana, a young side who had impressed at the African Cup of Nations earlier in the year by making the final, remained. Still, not much was expected of the West African team.
Since Italia 1990, African teams began to earn a reputation of causing upsets at the World Cup. Cameroon beat Argentina that year, while Nigeria effectively knocked out Spain eight years later.
In 2002, Senegal beat champions France and at Germany 2006, Ghana beat fancied teams Czech Republic and USA. Despite this, African teams have only managed to make the quarter finals twice before this year.
Ghana became the third team to make the last eight when they beat USA on Saturday, and now stand on the threshold of making history – and there will never be a better time for the Black Stars to win.
It isn’t only because Ghana represents Africa’s only hope at succeeding in South Africa, but because of where they and Africa has come from in both football and politics.
When Kwame Nkrumah became the first Prime Minister of Ghana, one of the first things he did was develop the national football team in order to encourage a popular Pan-Africanist movement.
He immediately initiated the team with Caf and moved to host the African Cup of Nations in 1963. Nkrumah wanted to show that Africans were in no subservient to any other nationality or race, off the field and on it.
Even the nickname, the Black Stars, represented a rise to power of a proudly African people who would shine in the new world they envisaged.
Now, more than 50 years later, Ghana has the chance to revive this vision and re-introduce the continent on the most watched stage in the world.
Winning against Uruguay tonight won’t only mean that an African team will progress further than they ever have, but will prove that Africa is capable of progress, on any level and in any arena. A semi-final spot is what Africa needs.
