Africa Is a Country

National Pride

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

National Pride

By
Sean Jacobs

Cote d'Ivoire is Africa's best team at the moment. FIFA says so. Egypt, the current African champions, are second.

Emmanuel Eboue of Cote d'Ivoire, the top African team on FIFA's latest rankings (Image: Kehinde Wiley's artwork)

I’ll take any excuse to post about football. Fifa, football’s world controlling body, announced the latest rankings for world football this week. Not surprising are the top five nations: Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Uruguay and Portugal. We of course care about the African rankings.

The African teams in the top 50 are: Cote d’Ivoire (no. 16, down one place) followed by Egypt, defending African Cup of Nations Champions are 36th, down 2 places, with Ghana (37th, down 1), Burkina Faso (41th, down 1), Senegal (42nd, up 7), Nigeria (43rd, down 5), Algeria (46th) and Cameroon (48th), making up the rest of the top African teams.

My country, South Africa, is just outside the top 50: they’re 51st, down 4 places. Didn’t they draw and beat Egypt in recent African Nations Cup qualifiers eliminating the 6-time continental champions from next year’s finals? I thought that counted for something.

Kehinde Wiley’s painting of John Mensah, Samuel Eto’o and Emmanuel Eboue.

Sierra Leone (now 68th, up 24), Togo (95th, up 26) and Namibia (119th, up 24) are three of the six teams outside the top 50 who improved their position on the rankings by more than 20 places.

Sources: Here and here.

Further Reading

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After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?