The loudest moment of AFCON 2025 wasn’t a goal

By Creppy EMMANUEL

History does not always arrive with a gunshot or a flag-raising ceremony. Sometimes, it arrives quietly—on a pitch, under floodlights, in a moment most people thought was “just football.”

At AFCON 2025, Michel Nkuka Mboladinga did not merely play a game.

He summoned memory.

In a brief but powerful tribute to Patrice Lumumba, he reminded the continent that Africa’s heartbeat does not only live in trophies and scorelines—it lives in story, resistance, dignity, and remembrance. Dressed in Lumumba’s iconic 1960s style, Michel stood with deliberate stillness, arm raised toward the sky—a gesture of liberation, continuity, and an unfinished future. That is the tragedy and beauty of soft power; we only notice it when it disrupts us.

Africa has long been trained to separate excellence from essence. We celebrate goals but forget the griots. We count medals but neglect meaning. What Michel did was ancestral, echoing centuries when sport, dance, and ritual carried memory, identity, and power.

Patrice Lumumba once warned that “Africa will write its own history, and it will be a history of glory and dignity.” Kwame Nkrumah echoed this truth when he reminded us that “We must reclaim our African personality.” Not occasionally. But intentionally. Michel’s gesture was not activism for applause; it was cultural literacy in motion.

Some may argue sports should be neutral, that athletes should “just play.” But neutrality is itself a position. Every platform carries values. To remember in public is not politicising sport—it is humanising it.

This is why this moment matters beyond AFCON. It is not about football.
It is about how Africans show up in every arena—business, technology, governance, fashion, music, diplomacy, education.

Our heroes are not relics. Our ancestors speak when we dare to remember. And this is where the responsibility returns to us.

Athletes must understand they are also carriers of memory.

Institutions must recognise culture as strategy, not decoration.

Creatives, educators, technologists, and policymakers must learn to embed African stories into systems, products, and platforms—not as nostalgia, but as living architecture.

So today, I throw my heart forward in salute.

To a man who reminded a continent that greatness without consciousness is hollow.

That talent without memory is incomplete.

That Africa’s power is not only in how we compete—but in what we choose to represent.

May this not be a moment we clap for and move on from. May it be a standard.

Because Africa does not lack icons. We lack daily devotion to them.

 

The post The loudest moment of AFCON 2025 wasn’t a goal appeared first on The Business & Financial Times.

Read Full Story