My knowledge of European club football doesn’t stretch much further beyond what gets posted here on Football is a Country and the odd link I come across on our Twitter feed (blame my wary interest on the historical underperformance of Belgian teams* and a time-consuming preference for all things music) so I was surprised to read Gabonese referee Jérôme Efong Nzolo was voted Referee of the Year by Belgian football players in this year’s Jupiler Pro League (that’s Belgium’s national competition). Nzolo was born in Bitam in 1974, came to Belgium to study for electromechanical engineer back in 1995, worked for some years in a car factory, later became a teacher and started refereeing in the national competition in 2000. National TV put the spotlight on him during his first top match some years ago. This year’s election as referee of the year isn’t his first time: he previously won in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Is the presence of referees of African descent still as rare in professional European club football as I believe it is, or should I read the footy pages more?

* This, no doubt, will change when the Belgian Red Devils manage to qualify for Brazil 2014 and go on to win the World Cup. That’s how it goes.

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

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