Africa Cup of Nations 2025: Geopolitical Stakes, Sport Power and Morocco’s Ambitions

Since 1968, the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) has punctuated the sporting and political life of the continent every two years. It is an event that goes beyond the purely sporting sphere to sit at the heart of dynamics of power, influence and diplomacy. Hosted this year in Morocco from 21 December to 18 January, the 2025 edition highlights the geopolitical uses of African football and the ambitions of the Cherifian kingdom. An update with Lukas Aubin, Director of Research at IRIS and a specialist in the geopolitics of sport.

What are the geopolitical and economic stakes surrounding the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations?

A major event in the pan-African calendar, it represents a strategic instrument for the host country and for the continent. Geopolitically, hosting AFCON first offers a diplomatic showcase and a lever of influence on three scales, within a diatopic logic: local (Morocco), regional (the African continent), and global (the football world):

1. At the local level, AFCON is mobilised as a tool of political legitimisation and as a way of narrating state modernity. While it can strengthen national pride and justify significant public investment, it also reveals persistent social tensions, notably around the prioritisation of spending, the long-term usefulness of sporting infrastructure, and the unequal redistribution of economic benefits. The event can then produce a showcase effect, unable to mask structural and social fragilities.
2. At the regional level, AFCON is part of a competition for African leadership in which sport becomes a space for the assertion of power and influence. Morocco consolidates diplomatic and institutional networks there, but this dynamic also reinforces asymmetric relations between states, marginalising countries with fewer financial or infrastructural capacities. The sporting competition then reflects political and economic imbalances on the continent more than it corrects them. Thus, AFCON is mobilised as a tool of political legitimisation and of staging Moroccan modernity. The accelerated renovation of stadiums in Rabat, Casablanca or Tangier, improvements in transport infrastructure, and institutional communication around an “exemplary” organisation contribute to building a narrative of state performance. However, this sporting showcase sits in tension with persistent social realities. The investments made are concentrated on event-driven facilities. This is why they raise questions about their long-term usefulness, in a context marked by strong expectations regarding employment, purchasing power and public services.
3. At the global level, finally, AFCON functions as an instrument of visibility and credibility within the football world, dominated by extra-African actors. While it enables Morocco to demonstrate organisational capacity and to position itself within international sports governance, it also underscores the structural dependence of African football on norms, calendars and capital largely defined elsewhere, in the West in particular. For Morocco, AFCON serves as a demonstrator ahead of hosting the 2030 World Cup. The organisational quality of the tournament, security management, the spectator experience and international media coverage are all elements intended to bolster Morocco’s credibility with global sporting bodies and European partners. However, this global projection remains constrained by an international football order dominated by extra-African actors. AFCON, despite its continental importance, remains peripheral in the hierarchy of world football, as shown by recurring tensions with European clubs over releasing players. Morocco thus integrates into the football world more as a high-performing emerging actor than as a genuine decision-making centre. Yet it is clearly a gateway to reaching a new dimension in the longer term: that of a global sporting power.

In this context, Morocco, like Côte d’Ivoire before it in 2024, intends to capitalise on the competition to stabilise the country’s socio-political situation, to consolidate its status as a leading African power, and to prepare its international dimension with an eye to the 2030 World Cup. In the twenty-first century, sport is a polymorphous instrument of power, to the extent that we will speak here of sport power.

In that respect, organising the tournament also reflects political power relations in Africa and Rabat’s growing influence. The awarding of AFCON 2025 to Morocco is a telling example. In September 2023, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) designated Morocco as the virtually uncontested host, after the sudden withdrawal of all competing bids, notably that of Algeria, Rabat’s regional rival. Officially motivated by solidarity with Morocco, these withdrawals were interpreted as a sign of Morocco’s diplomatic influence and of political fragmentation within the continent.

Economically, the stakes of AFCON are just as decisive for the host country. Morocco, drawing on its experience and its network of modernised stadiums, has embarked on major works in its host cities (Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Marrakech, Fez, Agadir). It is therefore banking on an influx of hundreds of thousands of visitors to promote its image and heritage, and is counting on additional tourism revenues estimated at more than 12 billion dirhams, thanks to the arrival of 600,000 to 1 million supporters on its soil. At this stage, it is difficult to draw conclusions. But we know that a sporting event can act as a growth accelerator and an argument for improving general infrastructure (roads, airports, communication networks), from which the local population can benefit sustainably if the projects are carried through.

However, these promises come with very real risks. The economic benefits of mega sporting events often prove lower than expected, with the “rebound effect” as the main consequence. The example of Cameroon, host of AFCON 2022, is often cited as a warning: despite a budget comparable to that of Côte d’Ivoire in 2024, Yaoundé did not manage to sustain the jobs created during the tournament or to reduce poverty over the longer term, with the economic momentum fading once the competition ended. Besides being very difficult to measure, economic capitalisation on an event is not systematic: the positive impact is neither automatic nor lasting. Major stadiums built for the occasion may become under-used “white elephants”. Seeing these venues fall into disuse – like Athens’ Olympic stadium abandoned after the 2004 Games – would constitute a stinging political failure and a possible additional cause of social anger. Host countries therefore multiply initiatives to avoid this scenario, for instance by planning to convert stadiums into concert halls, conference centres, or by allocating them to local clubs to anchor the tournament’s sporting and economic legacy.

Moreover, the question of competition sponsorship raises geopolitical issues. The presence of the online betting platform 1XBET among AFCON 2025’s official sponsors illustrates these contemporary dynamics of indirect influence. Although the company is legally registered outside Russia, its founders are of Russian origin and its international trajectory has been marked by a shift towards non-European markets, notably African ones, following restrictions or controversies in several Western countries. Without constituting proof of direct state interference, this type of partnership is part of a strategy of economic influence: sponsoring a major sporting event provides massive visibility and symbolic normalisation of the brand, associated with positive values such as unity, popular celebration and performance. In a fragmented global geopolitical context, where Africa has become an arena of intensified competition among Western, Chinese, Turkish, Russian or Middle Eastern influences, football appears as a privileged lever for accessing collective imaginaries. From the organisers’ standpoint, this openness to sponsors of diverse origins is above all a matter of financial pragmatism. CAF and Morocco are seeking to secure the resources essential to staging large-scale events, sometimes at the price of exposure to controversial economic actors. AFCON 2025 thus reveals a grey zone of international influence, where economic interests, symbolic visibility and geopolitical power relations intersect, without necessarily implying any explicit political alignment. It nonetheless confirms that African football, while a vector of continental assertion, remains embedded in financing and influence circuits that are largely transnational.

In conclusion, AFCON 2025 in Morocco carries multifactor and diatopic power stakes that go beyond sport: in that sense, it has a geopolitical dimension. For the Cherifian kingdom, it is an opportunity to assert itself on the African and global stage, to consolidate its image as a stable and prosperous hub, while stimulating its domestic economy. But it is also a risky bet: organisational and sporting success will have to be matched by astute post-tournament management in order to turn the trial into lasting benefits, while freeing itself from foreign influences. A prestige test as much as a development test, AFCON is therefore a laboratory where diplomacy, economics and geopolitics mix.

To what extent does the Africa Cup of Nations constitute a tool of soft power for African states?

The concept of soft power, introduced by Joseph Nye in the early 1990s, refers to the ability to obtain outcomes by influencing others’ preferences through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment. In this perspective, culture, values or sport become vectors of international influence. Yet this concept appears insufficient to grasp the full extent of sport’s power. In an age of the internet, globalisation and the multiplication of uses of sport as an instrument of power, we can now speak of sport power. Concretely, sport power refers to the plural ways of using sport. While it can sometimes be reduced to “seducing” or improving an image (soft power), it points to the capacity of a political actor to exert influence through sport in a polymorphous way: by mobilising resources, controlling institutional and calendar levers, investing in events, performances and infrastructure, corridor diplomacy, narrative (storytelling) or propaganda to penetrate the informational spaces of third parties (sharp power), nation branding, nation building, or even economic entryism (club takeovers, partnerships, etc.).

Football, a passion widely shared across the African continent, is in this respect a privileged lever of sport power: hosting or winning an AFCON offers a platform to project an image, strengthen national unity and increase symbolic influence, but also, increasingly, to consolidate positions of power within an international sporting order structured by power relations.

Domestically, AFCON exerts a formidable power of popular mobilisation that leaders know how to exploit. Each edition generates a surge of patriotic fervour: the run of a national team can spark a sense of unity in countries that are sometimes divided. Victories, in particular, feed a glorious national narrative. Players become ambassadors of the nation and role models of success. Aware of this impact, many heads of state associate their image with sporting success. For example, Cameroon’s or Nigeria’s AFCON triumphs have often been celebrated with great pomp by sitting presidents, who saw them as a way of strengthening national cohesion around their person. More explicitly, authoritarian regimes do not hesitate to instrumentalise football to legitimise their power. Mahfoud Amara, a specialist in sports policies, thus notes that African leaders use sport for prestige and public relations. In 2009, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s regime took advantage of a decisive World Cup qualifier between Algeria and Egypt, hosted in Khartoum, to break its diplomatic isolation: hosting this highly mediatized match allowed it to appear as an unavoidable regional actor despite the international arrest warrant hanging over him. Likewise, in Egypt, the authorities have often sought to appropriate the aura of the national team: Hosni Mubarak, like Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria, attempted to claim “their” players’ exploits to cement a sense of collective pride and to obscure domestic problems. Football can then become a kind of universal language between rulers and ruled: by delivering victories or hosting a successful AFCON, the leader can strengthen a symbolic social contract, making social or political difficulties fade for a time.

Internationally, AFCON is increasingly a tool for African states. Hosting the competition is an opportunity to present oneself in the best possible light to the world and to one’s neighbours. The host country polishes its welcome, showcases stability and modernity, hoping to leave a positive impression and later attract tourists, investors or major events. Hosting mega sporting events fits into nation branding strategies comparable to those observed elsewhere, such as Qatar’s use of the 2022 World Cup to redefine its international image.

In Africa, an emblematic case was that of South Africa. Excluded from world sport during apartheid, South Africans made sporting competitions a pillar of their post-apartheid diplomacy. From the 1990s onwards, Nelson Mandela understood the symbolic stakes of staging global events on African soil. Hosting AFCON 1996, and above all the 1995 Rugby World Cup and the 2010 Football World Cup, served to “rebrand” the country as a united and open “rainbow nation”, turning the page on apartheid. Similarly, Morocco multiplied bids over decades to host the Football World Cup, and in doing so promoted the image of a rising sporting nation despite its repeated failures. Each Moroccan bid, even unsuccessful, was accompanied by an international campaign highlighting Moroccan culture, infrastructure and stability, helping to build up a stock of goodwill abroad.

Some African countries with more modest influence also use sport as an instrument of power. Rwanda under President Paul Kagame is a striking example. This East African country has invested heavily in international sports sponsorship (the “Visit Rwanda” partnerships with the English club Arsenal or Paris Saint-Germain) and hosted the 2025 Cycling World Championships. The aim is to transform Rwanda’s image into that of a tourism and technology hub in Africa, and to make criticism of the regime’s democratic deficit fade. Kagame has thus turned sport into a weapon for his regime to divert attention from human rights abuses. This phenomenon, often referred to as sportswashing, illustrates the flip side of sport power: authoritarian governments seek to “cleanse” their reputation by hosting events or sponsoring prestigious clubs, hoping that international audiences will see only the spectacle and forget darker political realities.

Despite this trend, AFCON remains above all a factor bringing African peoples closer together. On and off the pitch, it creates a space for exchange where a pan-African identity is expressed, built from decolonisation in the 1950s and 1960s onwards. The tournament fosters informal encounters among political leaders on the continent, on the margins of stadium VIP stands, enabling gentle diplomatic dialogue outside official protocols: corridor diplomacy. It is no coincidence that the African Union symbolically supports AFCON as a moment of continental unity.

Ultimately, AFCON proves to be a powerful tool of sport power for African states, provided they know how to use it skilfully. It can serve to build a positive image, bring nations closer together and tell a valorising collective story. But its impact remains dependent on the policies that surround it: sport power cannot durably compensate for shortcomings in governance or development. While it can attract attention and goodwill, it must be part of a credible overall strategy. Indeed, a country’s image rests first and foremost on the reality of its political and social model: sport may reflect it in a glittering way, but it cannot be a simulacrum. For African states, AFCON is therefore a mirror with multiple facets: it reflects both the image of a dynamic, proud and united Africa, and the challenge of converting sporting success into real progress in the eyes of the world. In other words, sport power is a double-edged sword: it can be a positive force of mass diffusion as much as a negative spotlight trained on oneself.

Between 2025 and 2030, Morocco will host the Africa Cup of Nations, then the Football World Cup. What does this massive investment in sports diplomacy reveal about the kingdom’s geopolitical and regional ambitions?

From 2025 through to 2030, Morocco is living through an unprecedented and historic sporting sequence: the Cherifian kingdom first hosts AFCON 2025, then prepares to co-host the 2030 World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal. This massive investment in sports diplomacy lies at the heart of Morocco’s geopolitical and regional ambitions under King Mohammed VI. Building on recent sporting successes, beginning with the Atlas Lions’ run to the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup, Morocco is using sport to assert leadership in Africa, increase its status as a bridge between Europe and Africa, and radiate globally.

Hosting AFCON 2025 is first and foremost, for Rabat, the culmination of a strategy patiently pursued for years. Morocco is not attempting this for the first time: it already hosted AFCON in 1988 and has repeatedly bid to host the World Cup (1994, 1998, 2006, 2010, 2026), narrowly failing each time. These setbacks only reinforced the Kingdom’s determination to become a major sporting power. Under the impetus of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF), Morocco modernised its football ecosystem: the creation of the Mohammed VI Academy in 2009 to train young talent, the professionalisation of club management, and an opening to foreign expertise. The sporting results are there (a golden generation of dual nationals has chosen to wear the Moroccan shirt, a symbol of the renewed attractiveness of the national project) and they serve as a springboard for ambitions off the pitch.

Regionally, AFCON 2025 in Morocco is designed as a demonstration of quiet strength. Six host cities (Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Marrakech, Fez, Agadir) have been mobilised. For the first time, each team will have its own dedicated training camp and will be accommodated in a five-star hotel, while nine stadiums meeting international standards will stage the tournament. These figures reveal an assumed geopolitical ambition: Morocco, ranked 3rd in Africa in the 2025 Global Soft Power Index, intends to consolidate its status as an emerging African power by delivering “the most accomplished AFCON in history”. The organisational quality (infrastructure, security, hospitality) will be closely scrutinised across the continent, as Morocco seeks to appear as the preferred partner for major sporting events in Africa. Delivering a successful AFCON is a major credibility test ahead of 2030: the kingdom is positioning itself as an unavoidable regional hub capable of hosting top-tier competitions. Then, a few months after AFCON, Morocco will host other international sporting fixtures in 2026 (one thinks of the Club World Cup, the African Games, etc.). All these events constitute a full-scale logistical, security and media rehearsal for the 2030 World Cup that the country will co-host. Without any doubt, AFCON 2025 serves as a major laboratory for Morocco.

Morocco’s investment in sports diplomacy also responds to more global considerations of power. On the world stage, the Kingdom remains a middle power. Aware that it cannot rival the giants head-on, Rabat has chosen to invest in the intangible: culture, ideas and sport.

Indeed, Morocco’s return to the African Union in 2017, after 33 years of absence, was accompanied by an intense campaign to secure the support of a majority of African states for Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Sports diplomacy has subtly served this cause. Morocco presented itself as a supportive African country, multiplying initiatives of sporting cooperation with its neighbours. The FRMF has signed around forty partnership agreements with other federations across the continent, offering expertise, equipment and training for African sports officials. Better still, when certain countries found themselves without compliant infrastructure or faced insecurity (Libya, Mali, Guinea, etc.), Morocco lent them its stadiums to host international matches, or hosted their national teams for training camps. This solidarity has created an affective closeness between Morocco and many African countries, a soft influence that other external powers – Gulf countries, Turkey or China – cannot simply buy. In this framework, AFCON 2025 aims to function as a diplomatic platform for the Kingdom.

Morocco’s geopolitical ambitions through sports diplomacy are also visible at an intercontinental level. Co-hosting the 2030 World Cup with Spain and Portugal consecrates Morocco’s role as a bridge between Europe and Africa. As Morocco’s Minister of Youth and Sports stressed, this World Cup will not be “a simple sporting event, but a civilisational project par excellence, embodying the clear-sighted vision of King Mohammed VI and consecrating the Kingdom’s leadership as a bridge between continents and civilisations”. Beyond diplomatic formulas, it must be acknowledged that never before had an African country been integrated into a World Cup bid with European nations. By succeeding with AFCON and preparing for 2030, Morocco wants to demonstrate that it is “up to international standard” and that it now operates as the missing link between Africa and Europe.

However, this ambitious sports diplomacy is not without challenges and criticism. First domestically, Morocco must ensure that investment in sport does not come at the expense of other social sectors. In September 2025, a few months before AFCON, protests by young Moroccans (nicknamed the “Z 212” generation) broke out in several cities to denounce the deterioration of public services (education, health) and unemployment, pointing to spending deemed excessive on stadiums and event organisation. AFCON crystallised a latent social discontent: part of the population does not identify with this development showcase and is calling for investment more directly useful to everyday life. The Moroccan government had to deploy a justificatory narrative, arguing that sports infrastructure comes with local development programmes and that the economic benefits will ultimately accrue to all. It nevertheless remains the case that Rabat is walking a tightrope: delivering AFCON and the World Cup without provoking domestic resentment will be crucial to the legitimacy of the project. In this respect, the authorities are promising measures to sustain the legacy of the facilities built: integrating stadiums into a national sporting network, opening them up for concerts, cultural and community activities, so that the investment benefits Moroccans beyond football. This logic of social and political amortisation aims to avoid a widening gap between a flamboyant sporting showcase and the reality experienced by the population. At this stage, it is difficult to know whether these promises will be followed through.

Second, regionally, Morocco’s sporting push may generate rivalries. Neighbouring Algeria watches with concern as its historic competitor sets itself up as a pole of attraction for African sport. Algiers initially bid for AFCON 2025 and 2027 before withdrawing, officially to focus on internal reforms. Unofficially, this withdrawal on the eve of the CAF decision reflected the fear of a diplomatic humiliation and an admission that Morocco had already won the battle for support. Likewise, the Atlas Lions’ popular success in 2022 – acclaimed across Africa – somewhat eclipsed Algeria’s 2019 achievements (the Fennecs’ AFCON victory) in the collective imagination. There is thus strong Maghrebi emulation around sporting soft power, with each country seeking to assert itself as the region’s natural leader. In this context, Morocco skilfully plays the card of African cooperation rather than isolation: by aligning with Europe for 2030 and broadly inviting African neighbours to benefit from its facilities, it positions itself as a federator rather than a competitor. Nevertheless, it will have to maintain this balance and avoid any arrogance that could rekindle latent tensions.

Ultimately, Morocco’s sporting engagement reveals an ambitious geopolitical vision: to make the kingdom a crossroads of influences: African, Mediterranean, European and global. Through AFCON 2025 and then the 2030 World Cup, Rabat hopes to consecrate its role as a middle power whose influence is multiplied by sport power. This “diplomacy in boots” has already borne fruit in terms of prestige and partnerships. It corresponds to a doctrine in which sport is integrated into strategies of development and influence, on the same footing as the economy or traditional diplomacy. Of course, the gamble is not without risks: Morocco will have to convert the trial by succeeding both in logistical organisation, in the sporting performance of its team, and in the socio-economic legacy. That is the full measure of the kingdom’s geopolitical ambitions: to build, ball at its feet, bridges of influence and cooperation that underpin its rank in Africa and among the concert of nations.

In the end, the main question remains the following: will Morocco resolve the delicate equation mixing international geopolitical ambitions and local politico-social progress? If so, it would then truly establish itself as a major actor in world sport and as a laboratory of African sport. If not, it would join the long list of powers that have tried to capture sport power without succeeding. The ball is in Mohammed VI’s court.