PUBLIC LECTURE "AFRICAN FOOTBALL: REINVESTING THE LEGACY"
On the occasion of the 2024 Africa Cup of Nations in Côte d’Ivoire, a 45-minute lecture was delivered in Paris (January 2024) on the memory and legacy of African football. The conference examined how stadiums, players, and decision-makers have shaped African football from both a biographical and memorial perspective. Central questions guided the intervention: What can be learned from the legacy of African players, and how might their memory be reactivated? How have African stadiums been invested politically and culturally in the project of nation-building? Who were the administrators who actively disseminated and embodied decolonial ideologies in international football? The lecture positioned African football within an archival narrative of memory, heritage, and liberation.
CONTENT
The Africa Cup of Nations links diasporic communities to one another and to the continent through shared emotions and the production of collective memory. Beyond the tournament itself, it raises the responsibility to consider bridges between past and present, and to reinvest the legacy of African football as a framework for unity.
The work lies in assembling archives from images, to documents, to testimonies into a narrative that sustains collective memory. The key questions remain: how can heritage be reinterpreted from a diasporic standpoint? How can stories be told that encompass both the experience of the elders and the ongoing relationship with the continent?
STRUCTURE
The lecture was organised to provide an overview of African football across time and space: from the earliest editions of the Africa Cup of Nations to the most recent, and from a continental perspective spanning East, West, North, and South Africa, as well as the game’s connections with Europe. The presentation was structured in successive chapters addressing these historical and geographical dimensions.
EVENT INFO
Lecture delivered in French.
Paris, France.
January 2024.
Sole Speaker : HARLEM LAMINE
Presented in collaboration with Nike and Air Afrique.
INTRODUCTION
The role of archives, the archives between places, people, and stories, the football archives.
CHAPTER I. EAST AFRICA
African Cup of Nations in the Ethiopia of Haïlé Sélassié, Luciano Vassalo, the founders (Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, and South Africa), etc.
CHAPTER II. SOUTH AFRICA
The role of South Africa in African football, the political context within South Africa (Apartheid), the political context in international relations (multiple federations, relationships to football governing bodies)
CHAPTER III. OHENE DJAN
Focus on Ohene Djan as a football political and institutional leader in Ghana. His role in the evolution of football in Ghana and advocating in favour of African nations in international football tournaments.
CHAPTER IV. TATA RAPHAEL STADIUM
Focus on the Tata Raphael Stadium as a space that embodies Congolese society and the ideology of the political leader (Mobutu), etc.
CHAPTER V. AFRICAN DIASPORA IN EUROPE
The different faces of the African footballer between "indigenous", "immigrant", or "talent pool" for European clubs, the experience of exile, the Congolese player in Belgium (new identity after colonization, Paul Bonga Bonga), Salif Keita in Saint-Etienne, Portugal and its colonies.
CHAPTER VI. LE ONZE DE L'INDÉPENDANCE
Algeria and its quest for independence through football, Algeria and its relation to France through football players (Zitouni, Mekhloufi), Islamophobia, the embodiment of FLN ideology through international matches, etc.
CHAPTER VII. DIDIER DROGBA
African icon, role model, etc.
CONCLUSION
