fairplay Initiative at the Africa-Cup 2024

Our head of fairplay Kurt Wachter is one of the few German-speaking journalists taking part. After the traumatic experiences at the last tournament in Cameroon, where eight people lost their lives, he is hoping for a calmer Cup this time. 

Until the final in Abidjan on February 11, 24 teams will be competing for the continental crown. All the stars from the European and Saudi leagues are taking part, Mo Salah wants to win his eighth title with Egypt after 2010, Senegal with ex-Salzburg player Sadio Mané is the defending champion, while hosts Cote d'Ivoire - winners in 1992 and 2015 - are hoping for the support of the Ivorian fans and to overcome the scars of the civil war. In contrast to other footballing heavyweights such as Ghana, Tunisia, Algeria and Nigeria, Morocco, semi-finalists at the World Cup in Qatar, have made a good start to the tournament.

Kurt Wachter will be reporting for the football magazine ballesterer, and his impressions and reports will also be available here on our website and on the ballesterer podcast. He is hoping for interviews with one or two representatives from the Austrian Bundesliga. He will be joined by six current players, Karim Konate (Ivory Coast), Sekou Koita (Mali) and Dorgeles Nene (Mali) from RB Salzburg, Bryan Teixeira (Cape Verde) and Amadou Dante (Mali) from Sturm Graz and Ebrima Darboe (Gambia) from LASK. With the experience of eight AFCON finals, Kurt Wachter will also take a look behind the scenes of African football. A visit to the highly successful ASEC Momosa youth academy is also planned in Abidjan, whose latest product is Salzburg shooting star Karim Konate.

In between, Kurt Wachter will also report via Twitter (X) and Instagram.

The matches will be shown by the pay-TV channel sportdigital on DAZN or MagentaSport.

Here's another recommended read: the article by Olaf Jansen for Deutsche Welle with an original quote from Kurt Wachter.

Monitoring the human rights situation and reporting on the 34th Africa Cup is part of the Our Game for Human Rights project, which is funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA).