Africa-Press – Uganda. There is little need to start off this commentary with a reminder that on Sunday 11th July, the European soccer championship was wrapping up with a final match that was played out in the evening hours of the day, going by the time-zone in our part of Africa. Here in Uganda, there was marked excitement over the said football match as social media posts on the different platforms indicated.
A 2011 survey indicated that 72 percent of Africans were interested in football, 55 percent watched the European Premier League and 39 percent followed an English team. The research appreciated that no one could count the number of Africans in football bars (known as bibanda in Uganda), but the standard estimate was that 300 million Africans were regularly tuning into just the European Premier League. On the other hand, a 2019 GeoPoll survey noted that Uganda had a dismal and low viewership of 37 percent for the African Cup of Nations. Also, more people in Uganda said they “did not watch” or they “did not know” if they had watched the last AFCON tournament than people who said they watched the last AFCON tournament, which suggests that Uganda’s awareness of the tournament is low.
While the Ugandan scenario may not be representative of the entire Africa, it is telling of the fact that we have a possibly disproportionately high affinity for European soccer than our own African game. Soccer, in itself, would not be a big deal to warrant a deeper look into why many Africans find pleasure in the European package than their own, if it was standing alone in this trend of things. Boahen, a Ghanaian Professor, historian and politician wrote in 1987 that the most negative serious impact of colonialism has been psychological. This is seen, first, in the creation of colonial mentality among the educated Africans, in particular, and also among the populace in general. A major implement of colonialism’s influence on the psyche of African people was through the educational system. Rodney (1982) notes that colonial educational systems, the relics of which still remain in most parts of colonized Africa, were aimed at transforming the mentality of the educated African through miseducation. By condemning African culture, in terms of its music, names, dance, marriage, inheritance system, and discouraging that they do not be taught in schools, colonialism alienated people from their culture and introduced a sense of inferiority into the African psyche. Preference by the African, for things European or foreign, is traceable to this foundation of mindset influence introduced on the continent some decades ago.
These issues related to the impact of colonialism on the African psyche are highlighted in a journal published by one Shawn O. Utsey and colleagues in 2015. It has a strong bearing on the excitement we see around, towards European soccer. There is a sense of vogue that seems to accompany a display of love for and connection to European soccer in Africa’s educated class. This then drills down to the semi-educated populace and we thus have a large section of our people especially in urban and semi-urban areas drowning themselves in the European football craze. On the surface, this appears harmless. However, it is such dispositions amongst Africans that also feed into an inferiority complex of the African race and the crisis of confidence that we suffer.
It is also part of the broader mindset complex that sustains the tilt of the balance of the global wealth creation mill in which Africa provides raw material for foreign enterprise, with no commensurate return. A corrupted mindset generally finds no remarkable wrong with this tilted balance. This state of affairs was in any case created by the active colonialism agenda of years past – where an African elite class was created and given privilege to enjoy a level of superior lifestyle to their fellow natives and get Europeanized, at the expense of the masses.
As such, while the display of excitement of Africans over European soccer games appears innocent on the surface, it rides on a sense of subservience that is embedded in the history of colonialism and its extension of neocolonialism – and accompanying imbalances that work in disfavor of the African race. There is nothing wrong with European soccer on its own, and it possibly offers an impressive level of entertainment for its audience. We however lose nothing by scratching below the surface to contextualize the whole scenario of love between the African and European football. We can then extend concerns to what the African mindset, in such scenarios, serves towards the socio-economic emancipation of the African race and whether we need to apply effort to change the status-quo.
Raymond is a Chartered Risk Analyst and risk management consultant
