“Morocco is witnessing an unprecedented footballing renaissance. Its officials’ decades-longstrategic endeavor to promote football has paid off by enabling both its men and women teams to outperform their competitors in recent years. After playing the semi-final game of the World Cup in 2022, winning the 2025 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Chile, and winning the Arab Cup in Qatar in December 2025, the country is currently hosting the African Cup of Nations until January 18, 2026. The AFCON’s opening ceremony—which, in the words of journalist Amina Ibnou Cheikh, ‘confirmed to the world that Morocco shares with Africa the roots of its earliest human and cultural heritage’—presented a plenary corrective to prevalent notions of Moroccan history and identity by anchoring the country in Africa. The many criticisms of the state’s over-investment in sports that have accompanied the championship should not overshadow the equally important analysis of the way Morocco’s participation in these planetary events has continuously re-Africanized and re-Amazighized its identity. …”
Africa Is a Country