WeeklySA_AdminCommercialisation: FIFA has poured more than US$1 billion (R16bn) into African football under Gianni Infantino, expanded the continent’s World Cup representation and launched new development programmes. Yet, questions persist over whether its money is strengthening the game—or buying loyalty, weakening African autonomy and leaving grassroots football behind…
By The Conversation
Gianni Infantino may have retreated from a controversial proposal to sell investors a minority stake in FIFA’s commercial operations, but the steady commercialisation of world football continues.
For Africa, the debate goes beyond money. FIFA’s increased funding has delivered infrastructure, expanded development programmes and opened more World Cup places. At the same time, African football has become increasingly dependent on the global governing body, raising questions about accountability, political influence and whether the benefits reach the grassroots.
In this edited question-and-answer interview, The Conversation speaks to Gerard A Akindes, an adjunct associate professor at Northwestern University who studies the political economy of African football. He examines how FIFA funding, corporate interests and broadcasting networks are reshaping the African game—and asks whether the continent’s administrators can defend its interests while relying heavily on FIFA.
What role does FIFA play in African football?
FIFA is football’s global governing body. It sets and enforces the rules, organises major international tournaments such as the World Cup and oversees the sport’s development through six continental confederations, including the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
CAF manages continental competitions for national teams and clubs. Much of its revenue comes from the Africa Cup of Nations and financial support from FIFA.
FIFA’s role in Africa is complicated. Its development aid is critical, but it has also deepened the continent’s economic and political dependence on the organisation.
Schools were traditionally the main breeding ground for African athletes after independence. Decades of government disinvestment, accelerated by World Bank and International Monetary Fund adjustment programmes in the 1990s, weakened school sport and football’s developmental foundations.
Private academies partly filled the gap, but many function mainly as export pipelines for talented young players. At the same time, satellite broadcasts of European leagues captured African audiences and diverted attention from domestic football.
In this fragile environment, FIFA became an increasingly important source of support for national associations. Infantino transformed his predecessor Sepp Blatter’s Goal Programme into the FIFA Forward Development Programme and substantially increased subsidies. In 2025, he said more than US$1 billion had been invested in African football since the programme began in 2016.
FIFA’s contribution varies according to the government support and commercial revenue available in each country. In Togo, for example, FIFA reportedly funds about 30% of the national federation’s budget.
But the subsidies have also produced governance distortions. Reports in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have documented alleged irregularities involving FIFA Forward funds, highlighting persistent transparency and accountability problems.
Financial dependency has also weakened political autonomy. African association presidents and CAF’s leadership have shown little appetite for challenging FIFA. This is reflected in their support for Infantino and their limited criticism of controversial policies affecting African football and supporters.
Infantino also influenced CAF’s leadership transitions in 2017 and 2021, helping to shape the environment in which Patrice Motsepe became president.
FIFA funding can only be effective if national federations manage it competently and transparently. Without investment in governance, domestic leagues, clubs and CAF’s strategic independence, the money risks entrenching dependency rather than building self-sufficiency.
Do FIFA’s subsidies actually boost development?
FIFA funding does not appear to serve grassroots football adequately. It has largely reinforced FIFA-aligned administrative structures and prioritised elite football, infrastructure and tournament prize money.
This suggests FIFA is more interested in the professional game, where the political and branding returns are greater, than in the community and school structures that form African football’s foundation.
FIFA’s talent development programme plans to establish between 20 and 30 academies across Africa by 2027. But the initiative also exposes structural gaps.
Unregulated private academies have already mushroomed in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria and elsewhere. The new FIFA-backed academies therefore raise important questions: Will they help address the shortage of qualified youth coaches? Will they feed into domestic leagues and strengthen local clubs? Will they support properly organised national youth competitions?
It is too early to judge their effect. The first two academies, in Mauritania and Djibouti, began operating only in 2025.
Infantino’s Football for Schools programme, launched in 2019 and active in 46 African countries, also operates alongside weakened school sport systems. Its purpose is primarily to use football to teach life skills, rather than to improve the quality of football coaching and competition in schools.
By concentrating resources on highly visible elite programmes while neglecting deeper organisational and capacity problems, FIFA perpetuates a donor-recipient model that benefits only a narrow section of the football ecosystem.
Good governance, structural reform and capacity building must ultimately be driven by African governments and football associations. FIFA should support national development strategies—not impose projects that governments and associations merely endorse.
What is the impact of lucrative broadcasting rights?
Since pay television took hold in Africa in the 1980s, football viewing has steadily shifted towards subscription services. The change accelerated in 2006 when Arab Radio and Television acquired Algerian broadcast rights, forcing viewers to buy decoders.
Under Blatter, FIFA had an agreement with the African Union of Broadcasting that kept its tournaments on free-to-air television. That arrangement expired after the 2014 World Cup. Under Infantino, FIFA fully commercialised the rights by selling them to private broadcasters.
New World TV currently holds exclusive World Cup rights in sub-Saharan Africa. About half of the matches are sublicensed to public broadcasters, guaranteeing some free access.
But many African countries still face extremely high data costs and decoder charges. For supporters without pay-TV subscriptions, watching collectively in bars and public spaces—or relying on illegal online streams—may be the only realistic option.
When some of football’s most passionate supporters must navigate paywalls, costly data and unreliable streams to watch their national teams, FIFA’s record revenues look less like progress and more like a betrayal of football’s identity as the people’s game.
Could African nations help keep Infantino in office?
Africa has been a decisive FIFA voting bloc since João Havelange’s presidency from 1974 to 1998. A presidential candidate requires 106 votes from FIFA’s 211 member associations when only one or two candidates reach the final ballot.
Infantino has followed Blatter’s strategy of distributing resources and privileges where votes can be secured. African countries helped him win the presidency in 2016 after he promised to double development funding—and he has kept that promise.
His record therefore presents a complicated picture. FIFA has substantially increased development funding, expanded Africa’s World Cup allocation from five places to nine for the 2026 tournament and provided important financial relief during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet, Infantino’s policies have often proceeded without meaningful scrutiny from African football leaders. Reforms have been accepted even when they may not suit the continent’s needs, including proposals to hold the Africa Cup of Nations every four years instead of two and the abandoned African Super League project.
Africa’s 54 votes remain strategically crucial. Financial dependency helps explain why its administrators consistently support Infantino and rarely challenge his global commercial agenda.
But responsibility does not rest with FIFA alone. African football associations and political leaders understand the continent’s needs and must defend the interests of its leagues, clubs, players and supporters.
The central question is whether they can reclaim the autonomy and integrity required to shape African football on African terms—while remaining accountable to the young players and communities for whom the sport must remain the people’s game. – The Conversation
