By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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Senegal beat Egypt on penalties to win the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Cameroon on Sunday for its first championship glory in the tournament. Held against a background of a still deadly Covid-19 pandemic, it was always bound to be a different Afcon. And there was more.

As The Atlantic’s Clint Smith put it, “There are moments when the success of a sports team can transfix a nation. Such moments provide respite from difficult circumstances and can offer a sense of hope that permeates people’s everyday lives.
Senegal winning its first-ever Africa Cup of Nations... In Cameroon is such a moment.

“The final of this year’s competition was postponed six months because of the pandemic — featured the two best African players in the world, Sadio Mané of Senegal and Mohamed Salah of Egypt. What made the match-up even more intriguing is that
the two of them are teammates for Liver-pool Football Club, in England’s Premier

League. But Mané and Salah are not simply the two best African footballers in the world; they are two of the best players in the world, period.

“Attempting to describe what it is like to see Salah and Mané play on the same team is like trying to describe the northern lights  to someone who hasn’t seen them before. You can describe the colours, or the shapes of the bending arcs of kaleidoscopic light,
or the way it looks like the sky is breaking open in the most beautiful way — but until someone sees it for themselves, they won’t really understand.”

Yes, there was more than football at issue at the Afcon final but even the magazine only captured the historical significance of the moment. Nations and continents often witness events that are harbingers, signalling the approach of another. Sometimes they are the canary in the coalmine, warning of danger to come.

Afcon 2021 was a harbinger. And one of a recent series of sporting events that signalled majors. One of them was the 2014 African Championships in Athletics held in Marrakech, Morocco, in August of that year. There was a strange mix of apprehension  and optimism hanging over the game. The Spring revolutions of 2011 had roiled the Arab world but had largely been crushed
in many places.

Weeks later, in April 2015, Al-Shabaab carried out its historic attack on Garissa University College, a massacre in which 148 people died.

In Egypt, Field-Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had seized power earlier mid-year. Nigeria was being brought to its knees by Boko Haram militants. President Goodluck Jonathan was hanging on by the tips of his fingers.

Afcon tournaments tend to be messy, marred with embarrassing spectacle. Beyond the stadium stampede, in which at least eight people died and 38 were injured in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, all went swimmingly well. A surprise, given that the despotic President Paul Biya, in power for nearly four decades, is not famous for running an efficient state.

But this is also another inflexion point for Africa. In a significant reversal, many more Africans are migrating within Africa than to Asia,  Europe or North America.

In Salah’s homeland, the Grand Egyptian Museum, set to be the largest archaeological museum, will formally open this year.

In Mane’s Senegal, the Museum of Black Civilisations, opened in 2018 after 52 years. In the confrontation between Senegal and Egypt, as the rapper Kendrick Lamar would sing, there was a sense that amidst the gloom and uncertainty, an African butterfly is coming out of its cocoon. We will soon know its colours.

Senegal beat Egypt on penalties to win the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Cameroon on Sunday for its first championship glory in the tournament. Held against a background of a still deadly Covid-19 pandemic, it was always bound to be a different Afcon.  And there was more.

As The Atlantic’s Clint Smith put it, “There are moments when the success of a sports team can transfix a nation. Such moments provide respite from difficult circumstances and can offer a sense of hope that permeates people’s everyday lives.
Senegal winning its first-ever Africa Cup of Nations... In Cameroon is such a moment.

“The final of this year’s competition was postponed six months because of the pandemic — featured the two best African players in the world, Sadio Mané of Senegal and Mohamed Salah of Egypt. What made the match-up even more intriguing is that
the two of them are teammates for Liver-pool Football Club, in England’s Premier

League. But Mané and Salah are not simply the two best African footballers in the world; they are two of the best players in the world, period.

“Attempting to describe what it is like to see Salah and Mané play on the same team is like trying to describe the northern lights  to someone who hasn’t seen them before. You can describe the colours, or the shapes of the bending arcs of kaleidoscopic light,
or the way it looks like the sky is breaking open in the most beautiful way — but until someone sees it for themselves, they won’t really understand.”

Yes, there was more than football at issue at the Afcon final but even the magazine only captured the historical significance of the moment. Nations and continents often witness events that are harbingers, signalling the approach of another. Sometimes they are the canary in the coalmine, warning of danger to come.

Afcon 2021 was a harbinger. And one of a recent series of sporting events that signalled majors. One of them was the 2014 African Championships in Athletics held in Marrakech, Morocco, in August of that year. There was a strange mix of apprehension  and optimism hanging over the game.  The Spring revolutions of 2011 had roiled the Arab world but had largely been crushed in many places.

Weeks later, in April 2015, Al-Shabaab carried out its historic attack on Garissa University College, a massacre in which 148 people died.

In Egypt, Field-Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had seized power earlier mid-year. Nigeria was being brought to its knees by Boko Haram militants. President GoodluckJonathan was hanging on by the tips of his fingers.

Afcon tournaments tend to be messy, marred with embarrassing spectacle. Beyond the stadium stampede, in which at least eight people died and 38 were injured in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, all went swimmingly well. A surprise, given that the
despotic President Paul Biya, in power for nearly four decades, is not famous for running an efficient state.

But this is also another inflexion point for Africa. In a significant reversal, many more Africans are migrating within Africa than to Asia,  Europe or North America.

In Salah’s homeland, the Grand Egyptian Museum, set to be the largest archaeological museum, will formally open this year.

In Mane’s Senegal, the Museum of Black Civilisations, opened in 2018 after 52 years. In the confrontation between Senegal
and Egypt, as the rapper Kendrick Lamar would sing, there was a sense that amidst the gloom and uncertainty, an African butterfly 
is coming out of its cocoon. We will soon know its colours.