Africa Is a Country

As the cliche goes, there are only 3 things that an African child can be

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

As the cliche goes, there are only 3 things that an African child can be

By
Mawuena Akyea

We could call this: The Afro-Trifecta, if you will. They are a lawyer, some sort of business person, or a doctor. Teacher? Respectable, but not enough money. Artist? Quickest way not to be invited home during the holidays. And god forbid, an athlete. Most African parents consider the term “student athlete,” a gross oxymoron. Which is why the story of Ezikiel “Ziggy” Ansah is that much sweeter.

Hailing from the land of the Black Stars, Ziggy came to Brigham Young University in Utah with an academic scholarship. (He’d been converted by Mormon missionaries in Ghana.) Ziggy probably told his mother, “I know I’m 6’5, 270, with athletic prowess, but all I am going to do is just study hard. His major was actuarial science (I do not know what this is either), and then tried for two years to be a basketball player. That did not go so well.

Stuck in a foreign land, moonlighting as a custodian and running low on fufu and palm soup what is a young Ghana boy to do? Play football, of course.

Ziggy shined at BYU, playing as a defensive end and registering impressive numbers. So impressive, that he became a top prospect in the 2013 NFL draft, even though ESPN didn’t know who the hell he was:

No matter. He ended up being the fifth overall pick for the Detroit Lions and is delivering substantially for his new team.

From not being able to wear his pads, to being a rising star in the NFL is truly a story to behold. So please African parents, next time your child tells you that they want to be something else than a profession in the Afro Trifecta, try to keep your eyes from rolling and a blood vessel popping. Who knows? They might just be like Ziggy.

Further Reading

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.