By Trust Kudzayi Chikodzo, Coordinator of Kick Polluters Out and the KickTotalOutOfAFCON campaign
This year’s Africa Cup Of Nations (AFCON) has delivered plenty of magical moments but
perhaps the most striking was the iconic image of the Democratic Republic of Congo fan Michel Nkuka Mboladinga posing as Patrice Lumumba.
Dressed immaculately in the style of the legendary Congolese independence leader and freedom fighter, Michel placed himself amongst the chanting DRC fans in the stands, staying as still as a statue throughout each match his beloved national team played.
His stillness seamlessly connected Africa’s past
and present, our liberation politics and our beloved football molded together at the continent’s biggest football showcase.
Occupying a very different space not so far away in the stands sat another Patrice.
Watching from the comfort of the VIP section, far removed from the noise of the terraces, was
billionaire Patrice Motsepe, the president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) the two Patrices could not be more different as was clearly evident in a photo op that brought the CAF president and superfan Michel together.
One represents an African icon who stood for African liberation, independence and dignity.
The other is part of Africa’s billionaire class who signs deals with neocolonial, extractive oil corporations like
TotalEnergies who use football to launder their dirty image.
It’s no wonder then that TotalEnergies is paying billions of dollars to associate itself with
AFCON.
With over 2 billion viewers in the previous 2023 edition, AFCON is one of the most watched sporting events in the world — beating by a long margin the combined viewership of the Super Bowl and the Euros.
AFCON is one of Total’s best performing sports
sponsorships globally with 2.2 billion views across all digital platforms for the 2023 edition.
The tournament is the perfect place to project the image of a clean corporate brand to billions of viewers.
TotalEnergies desperately needs to create this image as it faces growing scrutiny in Africa over fossil fuel expansion, land grabs, and displacement of communities, as well as legal and regulatory actions linked to misleading climate claims,
human rights abuses and environmental harm.
Besides polluting our environment, the corporation’s East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is projected to displace over 100,000 people across Uganda and Tanzania.
At least 13 000 people have already been displaced many receiving inadequate or delayed compensation.
National parks, wetlands and water sources are at risk – all in the bid to lock Africa into decades of fossil fuel dependence.
From mass displacement linked to oil and gas projects to accusations of deceptive greenwashing, Total’s AFCON’s sponsorship is all about
diverting attention from the harm it has caused.
2025 wasn’t exactly a great year for TotalEnergies.
A French court found the company guilty
of deceptive greenwashing and ordered it to remove claims such as “carbon neutral by 2050” from its communications.
The UK Advertising Standards Authority similarly banned a TotalEnergies advert for misleadingly highlighting its commitment to renewables while
failing to disclose that 68% of its 2023 capital expenditure went to oil and gas.
Investor confidence in the company is faltering.
Britain and the Netherlands withdrew a combined
US$2.2 billion in financial support for its Mozambique LNG project following human rights
investigations.
Sweden’s largest pension fund, AP7, dropped it from its investment portfolio citing climate and human rights concerns linked to the company’s EACOP pipeline in Uganda and Tanzania.
In late 2025, human rights groups filed a criminal complaint accusing TotalEnergies’ of war
crimes in Mozambique, following reports that villagers were detained, tortured and killed
by security forces near its LNG site in 2021, in what has become known as the “container massacre.”
Internal documents revealed that the company may have been aware of the abuses from as early as 2020, yet continued funding these forces.
These revelations triggered official investigations by French and Mozambican authorities and human rights commissions.
At a time when scientists are warning that we have to phase out dirty fossil fuels to stop global warming, TotalEnergies continues to fuel the climate crisis by launching new oil and gas projects across the African continent. At COP30, its CEO Patric Pouyanne even questioned climate science, claiming “cyclones have always been happening”, while defending continued fossil expansion.
In the quest for Congo’s independence, Patrice Lumumba warned that Africa’s future would
be built by its people or stolen by those who profit from its resources. African football now
faces the same choice.
Even though Michel poses as the ‘Patrice Lumumba’ statue, it appears that it’s actually the other Patrice – Motsepe – that is the one who is frozen, stuck in
a bygone era of dirty fossil fuels.
Today, clean energy – for which Africa is vastly endowed – is not only essential for protecting our climate and environment, it is increasingly the
cheapest option with the potential to power development.
A global movement is gathering to remove fossil fuels from sport, just as Big Tobacco was once forced out.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has rightly described fossil fuel corporations as the “godfathers of climate chaos”. Like tobacco, their advertising has no place in public life.
Claims that football will suffer without this money echo the same discredited claims made by tobacco companies in the 1990s—claims proven false as the
sport’s revenues have only grown over the decades since.
CAF and Motsepe now face a choice: cling to polluting sponsors of the past or align African football with ethical partners.
The symbolism on the terraces demands nothing less.
Lumumba believed that Africa’s future could not be built on exploitation disguised as progress.
African football now stands at that same crossroads: it must decide whether it represents dignity and liberation, or whether it becomes yet another tool for facilitating the extraction of Africa’s resources and the impoverishment of its people.
Motsepe must stay true to Africa’s emancipatory ideals and ditch the dirty sponsors he is associating our football with, and embrace the clean energy future that Africa deserves.
Our beautiful African game must not be used as an image laundering operation by a neocolonial
corporation that faces war crimes accusations.
