Africa's 54 votes: crucial factor for Infantino's re-election to FIFA
FIFA President Infantino will attend the CAF summit in Cape Verde on October 7-8 to strengthen support ahead of the election. After the failure of a plan to sell tournament shares, he faced criticism from UEFA and the AFC, but maintained his loyalty to Africa. The head of the CAF Mocepe, an ally of Infantino, is organizing a meeting of 54 federations. Their 54 votes are critical to the Swiss' re-election in March. The event includes a review of the 2026 World Cup led by Arsene Wenger, masking political goals with a sporting agenda.
Gianni Infantino's African Shield: The Price of Loyalty Ahead of FIFA Elections.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino is preparing for a visit to the African Football Confederation strategic conference, which will be held on the seventh and eighth of October in Cape Verde. Formally, this event is positioned as a platform for discussing the pressing problems of the continent, but in the context of the upcoming election of the head of the world football forum, this trip becomes openly political.
The meeting was initiated by the head of the CAF Patrice Mocepe, a South African billionaire who has long been considered one of the most loyal associates of the Swiss. The letter sent to fifty-four national federations confirms the scope of the lobbies. For the incumbent Fifa president, whose seat has faltered, the support of the African electorate becomes a matter of political survival.
Infantino's reputation has been severely damaged after the failure of his controversial initiative to sell up to twenty percent of the commercial rights to FIFA tournaments, including the World Cup, to private investors. The move, aimed at monetizing the legacy of world football, has sparked strong opposition in UEFA, the Asian and North American confederations, where there has been open talk of the need for a leadership change. But not only did African functionaries not join the criticism, but they also showed striking loyalty, expressing support for a man who was trying to turn a sacred competition for fans into an object of stock speculation.
The arithmetic of next March’s Rabat elections is simple. Fifty-four votes of the African bloc constitute a critical mass in the council of two hundred and eleven associations. European colleagues have so far failed to find a worthy rival for the fifty-six-year-old Swiss, who has already officially confirmed his revanchist intentions. In these conditions, the October summit in Cape Verde looks not like a football forum, but like a dress rehearsal for the election campaign, where the development of sports fades into the background before behind-the-scenes agreements.
As a kind of bonus for African partners, a large-scale review of preparations for the World Cup of two thousand twenty-six is planned for the ninth of October. The event was curated by Arsene Wenger, who heads the FIFA Global Development Department. Similar tactical and logistics seminars have been held by the world football body since the World Cup final in South Africa, but their link to the pre-election period casts doubt on the exclusively sporting agenda.
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The next African summit risks becoming another illustration of how global football is sinking deeper into the abyss of corporate interests and political bargaining. While some confederations try to protect the basic principles of sports from privatization, others act as a reliable electoral shield, ensuring the inviolability of the current government in exchange for status events and the attention of high-ranking guests.
