The Empty Stadiums of Africa
The writer argues against Cameroon's bid to host the 2019 African Cup of Nations, contending that the tournament infrastructure perpetuates wasteful spending and serves political theatre rather than genuine development. The piece insists that African nations should build stadiums to serve their own domestic leagues first, not retrofit massive facilities for continental tournaments they cannot afford to maintain.
No AFCON 2019 in Cameroon? Oui Ça me plait, it’s fine.
When I first wrote this, it was titled "The Empty Stadiums of Africa”
As is customary every two years, we get to watch African football giants compete to take home the African cup of nations. Hosting the nations cup makes considerable deposits in the national pride bank - the race to host is always that, a race. What is also the norm is the fact that countries bid on infrastructure they do not already possess. After winning the bid, the host country then gets into all sorts of excessive dealings and financial manipulations to see through their infrastructural promises. Most African leaders seek to use the media exposure from such events to mask the economic hardships their policies and lack of accountability has imposed on their people and this usually translates to lavish, sometimes self named, stadiums and celebratory ceremonies that do not necessarily reflect the economic realities of the cities they grace.
When the transport systems are poor, security questionable, and general quality of life is poor, you cannot expect people to come out in their numbers and spend from their meager resources to consume entertainment that does not help them grow as individuals. We have fans in Europe who have a financial means of traveling to another city to watch their team play. They have enough to eat, purchase memorabilia, and travel back home on a secure and reliable metro system or even afford to pay for a night at a hotel and travel back when it is more convenient - I wonder how many in a hundred Cameroonians can afford such a luxury.
We all watched the most recent AFCON tournament that took place in Gabon and on most match days, the stadiums were not even half full. I begin to wonder what happens to these infrastructure when the glorious competitions are over. Gabon for example hardly has a robust national league to use and maintain the new stadiums rolled out for the recent AFCON and one would assume the overhead costs of maintaining one of those stadiums is a very significant amount.
We can't cut corners. We must build from the ground up not the other way around. The way I see it, all the stadiums being built towards the nations cup are nothing but a waste of resources. If we need stadiums in Cameroon, they should be the size of the new military stadium in Yaounde. Small stadiums that teams of the national league can use and be able to cover maintenance costs. In Cameroon, we are always trying to build a house without a foundation and no matter how much finishing or dressing we put on it, it will never stand.
I hear rumors that CAF believes Cameroon will not be ready to host the AFCON and that is exactly what I thought from the beginning. Simple bridge over the Wouri is taking forever.For all I know the eagerness to bring the AFCON here is just so that a few people at the top can cash out on contracts and do the bare minimum in terms of quality of deliveries. We all know what happened during the female version of the competition in Cameroon, how certain teams rejected the buses provided for their transportation which were basically old rehabilitated buses all because of someone wanting to keep some of the money allocated for the buses to himself.
Football is the least of our worries in Cameroon at the moment. There is still no road to go to Bamenda. One of the most well planned put neighborhoods in Cameroon (Bonaberi) still has no roads and we can continue the list forever. We need to get out priorities straight. We cannot use the beautiful game of football for political manipulations. I for one, I am not going to put myself in the security nightmare that is about to surround those games if they do come to Cameroon.
If our country is going to go into debt for anything, it should be to provide employment for the youth and I don’t see how many these stadiums are about to create. We can’t be burrowing from china to give it to china then owe china. I know no economics but I know stupidity when I see it.
I think we need to petition CAF to institute a policy that allows countries to only bid for hosting with stadiums that are already completed at the time of bidding. That way the governments will be proactive in building those stadiums if they actually take football that seriously.
Written in 2017, as Cameroon pursued hosting rights for AFCON 2019, the post reflects broader frustration with the cycle of African governments using major sporting events as vehicles for prestige and patronage while neglecting basic infrastructure—roads, transport systems, security—that directly affect citizens' daily lives. It speaks to a moment of visible cronyism and misallocation of public resources in Cameroon.
The piece articulates a principle of fiscal accountability and developmental sequencing that remains urgent: nations should not mortgage their future for symbolic gestures. It names a real pattern—empty stadiums, inflated contracts, maintenance burdens, corruption in procurement—that has played out across the continent. Its refusal to separate sports from politics, or to celebrate mega-events as progress, reads now as prescient skepticism against the glamour narratives that typically frame such bids.