CEO BLOG #30 JULY 2026

Picture: Reuters 

When you have had a month such as the one we have just been through, writing this blog becomes a challenge, as there are several threads that require sewing into a cohesive narrative. And sometimes, things just come together…  

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup unfolded, I found myself reflecting on something much bigger than football. Lamine Yamal. Jude Bellingham. Folarin Balogun. Zion Suzuki. Kylian Mbappe. Vizinho. Across almost every major national team, African-descended players were among the tournament's defining figures, and central to some of the competition's most memorable moments. The World Cup offered a vivid illustration of a reality that is increasingly impossible to ignore: Africa is no longer simply a continent, but a global people. When even Japan’s key player was of mixed African descent, you know that we are living in a key change moment that finally found visibility on sport’s largest stage.  

For many Africans, this made the calculus of who to support very interesting and the choices not as stark as simple allegiance to countries. Where previously it was guaranteed that all other Africans would support any African teams at the World Cup, things were not quite as simple this time. Now in addition to that automatic African solidarity, we saw loyalties being extended to individuals within teams that would not normally elicit any support, because they featured players of African descent. I believe that we witnessed was not merely sporting excellence but evidence that Pan-Africanism is entering a new phase. 

There have been two other waves of PanAfricanism as both intellectual and socio-political mobilising platforms. The first phase of Pan-Africanism emerged largely from the diaspora, and was the child of visionaries such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey and George Padmore, who sought to awaken a sense of common identity among people of African descent across the world. Confronting colonialism, racism and exclusion, they argued that Africans and their descendants shared a common history and a common destiny. Pan-Africanism 1.0 was therefore fundamentally about consciousness, and its central question was: How do we become aware of ourselves as one people? Its answer was identity, and the movement concluded that before political unity could be imagined, a shared sense of belonging had to be created. This was reaffirmed in the first five PanAfrican Congresses that were held between 1919 and 1945.

The second phase of PanAfricanism belonged to Kwame Nkrumah and the generation of African independence leaders who transformed Pan-Africanism from a philosophy into a political project. Where Du Bois and Garvey gave Pan-Africanism its consciousness, Nkrumah sought to give it institutional expression. Ghana's independence on 6 March 1957 became a symbol of possibility for anti-colonial movements across the continent. Nkrumah famously declared that Ghana's independence was meaningless unless linked to the total liberation of Africa. Ghana subsequently became a centre of Pan-African thought and organising, inspiring liberation struggles throughout the continent. Pan-Africanism 2.0 asked: How do we liberate and unite Africa? Its answer was sovereignty and institutional alignment. That this phase was of significance is manifest in what happened to its leaders, deposed in coups or eliminated with the direct and indirect prompting of Western intelligence agencies. The dream of continental unity frequently encountered the practical realities of harsh global politics and economic hijacking by the Bretton Woods institutions.

Today, a third phase of PanAfricanism is emerging. This is being shaped not by anti-colonial struggle but by global interconnectedness. Migration routes influenced largely by postcolonial ties, economic realities and extant soft power have resulted in people of African descent settling in almost every corner of the Earth, influencing every major field of human endeavour. This is what The Africa Centre describes as the Global African: a recognition that Africa's future is inseparable from the futures of its diasporas, and that stronger cultural and economic connections between the continent and its global descendants are essential to our collective advancement. Pan-Africanism 3.0 therefore asks a different question: How do we transform a globally dispersed African people into a connected global community? The answer is belonging. 

The 2026 World Cup offered a powerful glimpse of this new reality. Many players embodied multiple hyphenated identities simultaneously and proudly, normalised to the point of barely raising an eyebrow that almost all 48 countries featured players of African descent. Far from weakening Pan-Africanism, these layered identities demonstrate its evolution.