The History of Women’s football in Africa

As Ghana hosts the 2018 Women’s African cup of Nations (WACON), it’s just a great idea that we get to know how far the women’s game in Africa has come. Ghana is hosting this year’s event in the coastal cities of Accra and Cape Coast.

Here is what there is to know about women’s football in Africa

Credit : Football in Africa archives

Peter Alegi, has identified distinct time periods with the development of Women’s football in Africa including, “emergence and development (1970s–1980s), growth and transition (1990s), and institutionalization (2000–present).” During the 1960s and 1970s, male football administrators across Africa were largely uninterested in supporting the development women’s football teams. Though in Nigeria women teams were playing during the 1940s with the matches being reported in the national newspaper Nigerian Spokesman. These games featured women playing in shorts and were attended by a number of spectators. In South Africa in the 1960s, women several tried to create women’s football clubs including Jessie Maseko who tried to create a girls high school football club in 1962. In Cape Town a high school team called the Mother City Girls was created and played against boys’ clubs. By the 1970s, regular matches were being played by women in Senegal and South Africa. During the late 1970s, the national football federation started to set up women’s league across the country.

Numerous Nigerian cities hosted women’s football teams by 1960. Multiple efforts were made in the 1960s to start women’s football clubs in South Africa, but they proved fleeting. The 1970s saw some growth, with new women’s leagues in Nigeria and an expansion of women’s football into Western African countries, including Senegal. One local club in Dakar played a match against an Italian club in 1974; five years later, an early match between African nations was played by the Dakar side and a team from Guinea.

Despite a lack of support from Nigerian officials, 28 clubs played women’s football in the country by 1989, and Nigeria’s national team competed in the 1991 Women’s World Cup. More women began playing football in the 1990s, in countries like Nigeria and South Africa. In 1998, CAF introduced an official African Women’s Championship, following two unofficial versions of the tournament earlier in the 1990s; host country Nigeria won, beginning a stretch of five consecutive titles in the event. The next year, the squad reached the quarterfinals of the 1999 Women’s World Cup.

Football is played in a limited capacity by women due to a lack of funding. The masculine nature of football has proved a deterrent to women’s involvement in football in Africa.