First Africa Cup of Nations
The first Africa Cup of Nations, held in Khartoum, Sudan, in February 1957, launched what would become the premier international football competition on the continent. Egypt won the tournament, but its lasting importance lies in what it represented: a moment when African football administrators, many from countries still under colonial rule or only newly independent, created an institution of their own.
The tournament grew out of the founding of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), which was established in Khartoum in 1957 during the congress held alongside the competition's first edition. Its early backers included officials from Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Until then, African teams had played in a world football system dominated by European and South American bodies, and the continent's representation in FIFA was minimal. The push for a continental organization reflected the wider mood of the 1950s, when independence movements were gathering pace and Sudan had only recently become a sovereign state, in 1956.
The event itself was small. Only three teams took part: Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. South Africa had also been scheduled to compete, but it was disqualified after refusing to field a racially integrated team, a requirement that CAF would not waive. That decision made the tournament's first edition an early example of sport colliding with apartheid politics. Ethiopia advanced to the final by default, having been drawn against South Africa, while Egypt defeated Sudan in the semifinal.
In the final, Egypt beat Ethiopia, with the striker Mohamed Diab El-Attar widely credited with scoring most of the goals in the match. Sources generally agree on Egypt's victory and the leading role of El-Attar, though details of the early records are not always consistent across accounts.
The consequences were considerable. The tournament became a regular fixture, growing from three teams to a field of well over a dozen, and eventually to 24. It gave newly independent states a stage on which to assert national identity, and it helped develop footballing traditions in West, Central, and North Africa, producing champions such as Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Côte d'Ivoire. South Africa's exclusion foreshadowed its long isolation from international sport, and it did not appear at the competition until after the end of apartheid, in 1996.
Today the tournament's origins in Khartoum are a reminder of how sport and decolonization developed together. What began as a modest three-team event is now a major international spectacle, followed by hundreds of millions of viewers.