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Scholarship on Afrikan football has increasingly moved beyond celebratory narratives of sporting success towards a more critical examination of football as a political and economic institution. Scholarship has increasingly located Afrikan football within wider histories of colonialism, labour migration, commercialisation and global governance (Akindes; Cornelissen; Darby). Yet most studies begin with migration or professional contracts.<\/p>\n
Recent Afrikan-centred writing on football has begun to name this contradiction more clearly. Gerard Akindes<\/a>asks whether Afrikan countries can dominate global football while losing control of their own game, locating contemporary football within a longer history of globalisation, migration, commodification and institutional dependence. This framing is useful because it avoids two common simplifications: the romantic claim that global football is simply opportunity, and the reductive claim that Afrikan players are merely victims. The more precise question is how Afrikan talent becomes incorporated into global football markets, and who controls the institutions that convert that talent into enduring value.<\/p>\n Every time we watch the UEFA Champions League, we see twenty-two footballers. We rarely see the thousands of people employed because those twenty-two players exist: physiotherapists, nutritionists, AI analysts, statisticians, broadcasters, lawyers, hotel workers, camera operators, journalists, betting companies, sportswear manufacturers and software engineers. Football is not simply a sport. It is an industrial ecosystem<\/a>. Europe did not become wealthy from football because it had the best players alone. It built the industries around them.<\/p>\n This market is racialised. Afrikan players are often described through a vocabulary of pace, power, hunger, instinct and resilience, while European football institutions are associated with intelligence, discipline, tactics, science and development. Such language is not neutral. \u00a0It presents Afrikan footballers as raw athletic material requiring refinement elsewhere, while obscuring the labour already invested by Afrikan families, schools, communities, coaches and academies. Talent is not raw. It is socially produced.<\/p>\n The racialised industry of exporting sporting talent<\/a> also extends beyond football. Afrikan athletes have long been central to global markets in athletics, rugby, basketball and combat sports. Football, however, provides the clearest case because its transfer fees, media rights and commercial revenues make the commodification of human capability highly visible. A young player may leave an Afrikan academy with limited immediate market value, then appreciate dramatically after entering European club systems, global broadcast markets and elite competitions. The question is not whether the player benefits. Many do. The question is where the largest share of appreciation accumulates.<\/p>\n This is why the language of \u201ctalent drain\u201d is insufficient. Afrikan footballers are not simply lost to Europe and other parts of the world. They become part of a global value chain in which European clubs, Gulf investors, international broadcasters, sponsors, data firms and governing bodies capture different layers of value. The player is labour, but also asset, brand, media content, transfer commodity and speculative investment.<\/p>\n The 2026 FIFA World Cup makes this visible. European and North American teams increasingly rely on Afrikan and Afrikan-diaspora footballers<\/a>. France, Belgium, Portugal, \u00a0Germany, England , Canada and the US all illustrate the extent to which Afrikan and migrant capability has become embedded in national football projects beyond the continent. This should not \u00a0always be read simply as loss: diaspora players often maintain powerful ties to Afrikan identities, communities and national teams. But it demonstrates that Afrikan footballing labour circulates through multiple national projects while the commercial infrastructure remains concentrated elsewhere.<\/p>\n This is also where football’s colonial geographies<\/a> remain visible. Recruitment corridors linking Senegal and Mali to France, Ghana to Belgium, Nigeria to England, Morocco to Spain and France, and \u2018Lusophone\u2019 Afrika to Portugal are shaped by language, migration regimes, earlier colonial relations and existing institutional networks. Football does not mechanically reproduce colonialism, but it often travels along routes that colonialism and postcolonial migration helped build.<\/p>\n The geography of capital is also changing. European clubs remain central, but Gulf capital has become increasingly influential. Qatar’s Aspire Academy has run extensive talent identification programmes in Afrika. Gulf-based media and sponsorship networks have also become significant to Afrikan football governance. CAF’s long-term broadcasting deal with beIN Media Group, reported at roughly US$415 million, and the staging of marquee Afrikan football events in Saudi Arabia show how Afrikan football is increasingly positioned within wider geopolitical and commercial strategies. The axis is therefore no longer simply Afrika-Europe. It now involves Afrikan talent, European football institutions, Gulf capital, global media and FIFA\/CAF governance.<\/p>\n Scarlett Cornelissen’s work on sport mega-events in Afrika<\/a> is useful here because it treats sport not as entertainment but as part of global capitalism, state ambition and geopolitical positioning. Her analysis of sport mega-events shows how Afrikan states and institutions enter global sport through promises of development, visibility and modernisation, while the actual distribution of economic benefit remains uneven. This helps frame football as an institutional economy rather than a cultural spectacle.<\/p>\n My \u00a0recent football writing also extends this analysis by linking FIFA, empire, anti-Blackness, securitisation and the capture of the \u201cbeautiful game.\u201d In Fortress Football<\/em>, I argue that football’s global spectacle cannot be separated from borders, policing, racism, exclusion and the corporate enclosure of spaces built by working-class and racialised communities. This article builds from that argument but shifts the focus from mega-events and access to the prior question of production: how Afrikan human capability is produced, commodified and absorbed into global football’s value chain.<\/p>\n The political economy is therefore not adequately captured by saying that Europe \u201ctakes\u201d Afrikan players. The structure is more complex. Afrikan families, communities and institutions contribute substantially to producing footballing capability<\/a>. European clubs and increasingly Gulf-linked capital identify, purchase, develop and commercialise that capability. FIFA and CAF govern the rules of circulation. Global media platforms and sponsors monetise the spectacle. Domestic Afrikan leagues, however, often remain undercapitalised, administratively fragile and commercially marginal relative to the value produced by Afrikan footballers abroad.<\/p>\n The developmental question is not whether Afrikan players should migrate. It is whether Afrikan football economies can build institutions capable of retaining a greater share of the value generated by their own human capability.<\/p>\n Afrika’s Hidden Subsidy to Global Football<\/strong><\/p>\n The scale of Afrika’s contribution to global football<\/a> is no longer anecdotal. It is measurable.CIES Football Observatory data show that international football migration has continued to rise, with expatriate players reaching a new record in 2024 across 135 men’s leagues in 88 national associations. Between 2020 and 2025, Nigeria recorded one of the largest increases in expatriate footballers globally, rising by 181 players, behind only France and Argentina. Earlier research on Afrikan football migration found that more than 500 male Afrikan players were active in Europe’s eleven biggest leagues in the 2021\/22 season, with Senegal, Morocco, Nigeria, C\u00f4te d’Ivoire and Ghana among the leading sending countries.<\/p>\n Afrika’s contribution to world football is not only cultural or sporting. It is also financial, although much of that finance never appears in football’s official accounts.<\/p>\n It is difficult to place an exact monetary value on this subsidy because most of it takes the form of unpaid care, informal community investment and public expenditure spread across many institutions. But the scale can be approximated from the value captured later. European football generated a record \u20ac38 billion in revenue in 2023\/24<\/a>, with the big five leagues alone contributing more than \u20ac20 billion. Afrikan players are active across these leagues in significant numbers. Earlier estimates placed the number of Afrikan players in Europe’s eleven biggest leagues at more than 500, with Senegal, Morocco and Nigeria alone contributing 62, 55 and 54 players respectively in 2021\/22.<\/p>\n If Afrikan players constitute even a modest share of the labour force sustaining this \u20ac38 billion industry, their economic contribution runs into billions annually. This does not mean those billions can be mechanically attributed to Afrika alone. Football value is jointly produced by clubs, coaches, broadcasters, sponsors, supporters and competitions. But it does mean that Afrikan labour and Afrikan social investment are embedded within one of Europe’s most profitable cultural industries.<\/p>\n The transfer system gives us another way to see the imbalance. FIFA’s solidarity mechanism recognises that player development is cumulative by allocating up to 5% of a transfer fee to clubs involved in training a player between roughly the ages of 12 and 23. That 5% is important, but it also reveals the problem. Even when properly paid, it recognises only a narrow institutional slice of development. It does not compensate mothers, schools, communities, municipal facilities, national youth systems or the years of unpaid and underpaid labour through which the athlete was produced.<\/p>\n Consider the arithmetic<\/a>. On a \u20ac75 million transfer, 5% solidarity compensation amounts to \u20ac3.75 million distributed across eligible training clubs. The remaining \u20ac71.25 million circulates through selling clubs, buying clubs, agents, wages, taxes and associated commercial structures. The Afrikan social investment that made the player possible is acknowledged, if at all, only indirectly and partially.<\/p>\n This is why the language of subsidy matters. Afrika is not merely exporting footballers. It is helping finance the early production of a global football labour force whose highest commercial returns are realised elsewhere. The subsidy is hidden because it is dispersed across households, communities and underfunded local institutions rather than recorded in the ledgers of UEFA clubs, FIFA, broadcasters or sponsors.<\/p>\n The developmental loss is therefore larger than the departure of individual players. Afrikan leagues lose potential stars who could increase ticket sales, domestic broadcasting value, sponsorship markets, youth participation, football journalism, sports medicine, coaching jobs, data analytics, merchandising and tourism. In this sense, Afrika exports not only players but future football economies.<\/p>\n This does not mean Afrikan players should be prevented from migrating. Mobility has transformed lives and created enormous opportunities. The question is whether Afrikan football institutions can capture a fairer share of the value that Afrikan societies help produce.<\/p>\n Accumulation, Value Capture and the Afrikan Football Economy<\/strong><\/p>\n Political economy<\/a> distinguishes between the production of value and its consumption. These are not synonymous. Countries may produce indispensable commodities while capturing only a small share of the wealth generated through their circulation. Contemporary debates on global value chains have demonstrated that the highest returns increasingly accrue not through production alone but through ownership, finance, branding, technology, logistics, intellectual property and control over distribution. Football demonstrates these dynamics with remarkable clarity.<\/p>\n Victor Osimhen did not become a \u20ac75 million footballer<\/a> overnight. Long before Napoli paid one of the largest transfer fees ever for an Afrikan player, his value had already been patiently assembled. It had been built by his mother, by neighbourhood football in Lagos, by years of coaching, by school competitions, by the Nigerian football system and by the communities that sustained him. Napoli did not purchase a raw talent. It purchased nearly two decades of accumulated social investment whose greatest commercial appreciation was still to come.<\/p>\n The global football economy<\/a> is now estimated to generate well over US$60 billion annually, while European professional football alone generates annual revenues exceeding \u20ac38 billion. The “Big Five” European leagues account for the overwhelming share of broadcasting income, commercial sponsorship, merchandising, hospitality and global media revenues.<\/p>\n Afrikan footballers contribute substantially to this commercial ecosystem. Players from Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Ghana, C\u00f4te d’Ivoire, Mali, Cameroon, Algeria and South Afrika feature prominently across Europe’s leading competitions, while Afrikan-born and Afrikan-diaspora players have become central to the competitive success of clubs in England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and increasingly North America. Their performances generate value far beyond wages or transfer fees. They contribute to television audiences, global merchandising, sponsorship contracts, digital engagement, tourism, betting markets, licensing agreements and club valuations.<\/p>\n The issue, therefore, is not whether Afrikan footballers are rewarded. Many are among the world’s highest-paid athletes. The question asked by the \u00a0political economy is different. Which institutions capture the greatest share of the wealth they help generate?<\/p>\n The answer lies in football’s institutional architecture<\/a>.<\/p>\n Elite clubs own the contracts through which player value is realised. Broadcasters own the media rights through which audiences are monetised. Sportswear corporations commercialise global identities through branding and merchandising. Data analytics firms transform player performance into proprietary information. Betting companies derive profits from football’s uncertainty, while digital platforms monetise fan engagement through subscription models and advertising. Governing bodies regulate entry into these markets, while sponsors convert sporting visibility into commercial advantage.<\/p>\n The footballer remains indispensable to each of these processes.<\/p>\n Yet the footballer is only one participant within a much larger ecosystem of accumulation.<\/p>\n This distinction has profound implications for Afrika. Domestic leagues continue to experience comparatively low broadcasting revenues, limited commercial sponsorship, weaker sports infrastructure and constrained institutional investment relative to European football. As Gerard Akindes<\/a> argues, Afrika has become increasingly integrated into the global football economy while remaining structurally disadvantaged within its most profitable segments. The result is not the absence of Afrikan participation but its concentration within labour-intensive stages of the football value chain, while ownership of higher-value activities remains disproportionately located elsewhere.<\/p>\n The developmental challenge therefore extends beyond player migration. It concerns industrial organisation. Europe has spent decades constructing dense football ecosystems<\/a> comprising professional coaching, sports medicine, biomechanics, nutrition, artificial intelligence, performance analytics, legal services, financial management, sports media, marketing, hospitality, event management and advanced broadcasting industries. Football has become an industrial cluster whose economic significance extends far beyond the ninety minutes played on the field.<\/p>\n This insight has received insufficient attention within Afrikan development debates. Football is too often understood either as entertainment or as a source of national prestige. It is neither alone. It is an economic sector capable of generating employment, technological innovation, research, tourism, manufacturing, creative industries and financial services. The export of footballers therefore represents only one component of a much larger economy.<\/p>\n This article argues that Afrika’s strategic challenge is not to reduce football migration. Rather, it is to reposition Afrikan football within higher-value segments of the industry’s global value chain. This requires investment not only in players but also in domestic leagues, coaching systems, sports science, sports medicine, broadcasting, digital media, data analytics, legal expertise, intellectual property, women’s football, sports manufacturing and commercial management. It also requires stronger institutions capable of negotiating media rights, protecting young players, enforcing solidarity payments and retaining a greater share of football’s economic surplus within Afrikan economies.<\/p>\n As I argued in recent analyses of FIFA, the World Cup and the global football economy, contemporary sport mirrors wider patterns of global capitalism in which Afrika contributes indispensable human capability while ownership over finance, governance, media and commercial infrastructure remains concentrated elsewhere. Football therefore offers more than a sporting case study. It reveals a broader political economy in which the central developmental question is not whether Afrika creates value, but whether it possesses the institutions necessary to retain, compound and govern that value.<\/p>\n Football as an Industrial Ecosystem<\/strong><\/p>\n Football’s political economy extends far beyond the labour of the player. An elite club is not simply a team. It is a complex economic ecosystem.<\/a><\/p>\n Around every first-team squad sits a large workforce. The match is only the most visible part of the economy. The larger value lies in the industries that surround it.<\/p>\n The scale is substantial. Deloitte estimates<\/a> that the top twenty football clubs in the world generated more than \u20ac12 billion in revenue for the first time in the 2024\/25 season.<\/p>\n These revenues are not generated by players alone. They come from broadcasting<\/a>, commercial partnerships, matchday income, museums, hospitality, restaurants, stadium tours, retail, licensing, sponsorship, digital media and global brand management. Deloitte reported that matchday revenue for the top clubs surpassed \u20ac2.1 billion in 2023\/24, driven by larger stadiums, premium hospitality and year-round commercial use of club facilities.<\/p>\n The employment effect is equally important. An EY study for the Premier League found that in the 2023\/24 season, the League and its clubs generated \u00a39.8 billion in gross value added to the UK economy, supported more than 100,000 full-time equivalent jobs and contributed \u00a34.4 billion in tax. These are not only football jobs. They include transport, tourism, security, hospitality, broadcasting, retail, construction, media, legal services, finance and local supply chains.<\/p>\n Afrikan players on the pitch are therefore only one node in a much larger economy. This is what Afrikan football \u00a0is not yet capturing at scale. Afrikan countries contribute substantially<\/a> to the football labour that sustains this global economy<\/a>, but the surrounding industrial ecosystem is still largely located elsewhere. Europe and increasingly Gulf-backed football capital capture value not only through players but through the entire architecture around them: sports medicine, performance analytics, broadcasting, licensing, tourism, betting, merchandising, apparel, stadium real estate, image rights, finance and legal services.<\/p>\n This matters because the developmental loss is not only the player who leaves. It is the absence of the industries that could have grown around him. A domestic league capable of retaining elite players for longer could support jobs in sports medicine, coaching, media, kit production, stadium management, sports law, fan tourism, data analytics and digital content. A stronger football economy would not only employ footballers. It would employ thousands of people who may never touch the ball.<\/p>\n Afrika therefore subsidises global football twice. First, through the social investment that produces footballers. Second, through the lost industrial ecosystems that are built around those footballers elsewhere.<\/p>\n The article has followed the political economy of that footballer across successive stages of value creation. Drawing on Gerard Akindes’ work on the globalisation of Afrikan football and Iwebunor Okwechime’s analysis of Afrikan football labour migration, the article demonstrated how Afrikan capability is incorporated into international recruitment systems, transfer markets and global football value chains that increasingly operate across Europe, North America and the Gulf. (Afrikasacountry.com<\/a>; Okwechime, 2019)<\/p>\n The empirical evidence reinforces this argument. CIES Football Observatory data consistently identify Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, C\u00f4te d’Ivoire, Morocco, Mali and Cameroon among the world’s leading exporters of professional footballers. Deloitte estimates that European football generated approximately \u20ac38 billion in revenue during the 2023\/24 season, while the top twenty clubs generated more than \u20ac12 billion in annual revenues. FIFA’s transfer regulations,<\/a> solidarity mechanisms and training compensation rules further acknowledge that football talent is produced cumulatively across multiple institutions, even if they recognise only a small fraction of that developmental investment. Collectively, these data demonstrate that Afrikan footballers are indispensable contributors to one of the world’s largest cultural and entertainment industries. Yet the greatest commercial returns continue to accrue through ownership of clubs, broadcasting rights, commercial partnerships, sports technology, intellectual property and financial services rather than through player production alone.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n This article has argued that Afrikan country contributions to global football extends far beyond the export of talented players. Afrikan societies contribute one of the game’s most valuable resources: the continual production of world-class human capability. Yet the greatest economic returns generated by that capability are largely realised elsewhere, through clubs, broadcasters, sponsors, governing bodies, sports technology, finance and the wider commercial ecosystem that surrounds the modern game.<\/p>\n Understanding football through this wider political economy shifts attention away from transfer fees<\/a> alone towards the institutions through which value is accumulated, retained and compounded. The transfer market represents only one moment within a much larger system of wealth creation. Long before players generate commercial returns on the pitch, Afrikan households, communities, local clubs and public institutions have already invested in the capabilities upon which the global game depends. Long after players retire, meanwhile, the greatest value increasingly lies beyond the player\u2014in broadcasting rights, data, merchandising, sports medicine, intellectual property, finance and global media.<\/p>\n The central question is therefore not whether Afrikan countries can continue producing exceptional footballers. It clearly can. The more pressing question is whether Afrika can participate more fully in the industries that surround football itself. The future of Afrikan football will depend not only on developing<\/a> players but on building stronger domestic leagues, retaining commercial rights, expanding coaching and sports science, investing in digital technologies and data, strengthening governance and creating regional football industries capable of capturing more of the value that Afrikan talents and capability already generates.<\/p>\n Afrika has never been peripheral to the global game. It has been one of its principal producers. The challenge now is to move beyond supplying football labour towards shaping, owning and benefiting from the broader football economy itself.<\/p>\n The question is whether Afrikan countries can increasingly own, govern and expand the football economies that their societies have helped to create.<\/p>\n Answering that question requires moving beyond the political economy of talent extraction towards a political economy of institutional ownership, regional industrial development and Afrikan value capture. Only then can football become not merely one of Afrika’s greatest exports, but one of its most important engines of structural transformation.<\/p>\n (By Liepollo Lebohang Pheko)<\/p>\n