In anticipation of hosting the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, Morocco has commenced the training of 15,000 volunteers across the country, signalling a broad national effort to ensure the seamless delivery of one of the continent’s most prestigious sporting tournaments. The initiative reflects a growing trend across Africa where major sporting events are not merely athletic spectacles but instruments of civic engagement, continental solidarity and soft power.
The volunteer programme, which concluded its initial session between 7 and 10 November in Rabat, is coordinated by Morocco’s Office for Vocational Training and Job Promotion (OFPPT). It aims to provide a workforce capable of delivering a professional, hospitable experience for athletes, officials and spectators during the tournament. According to Chaimae Kiani, an OFPPT official, the training encompasses modules in public assistance, communication, crisis response and teamwork. This approach is designed to ensure that the volunteers can manage diverse environments such as airports, hotels, train stations, and stadiums during the tournament period, which runs from 21 December 2025 to 18 January 2026.
Among the 15,000 volunteers are more than 1,000 African students residing in Morocco, whose participation reflects the country’s Pan-African orientation. Their inclusion speaks not only to the diversity of the event’s logistics but also to Morocco’s intention to frame AFCON 2025 as a truly continental endeavour. This narrative counters older patterns where large-scale sports events in Africa were often structured around centralised national showcases, with limited regional engagement. Involving students and professionals from other African countries points to a more inclusive, cooperative framework and asserts the importance of transnational participation in building shared African futures.
The mobilisation has extended across 70 vocational training centres nationwide, with over 150 instructors facilitating workshops in civic responsibility, intercultural communication and logistical management. These programmes do not merely serve an immediate operational function. They are part of a wider national agenda that views sports diplomacy as an essential vector for youth empowerment and regional integration. Morocco’s approach to volunteer mobilisation forms part of its longer-term strategy, including preparations for co-hosting the 2030 FIFA World Cup, alongside Spain and Portugal.
Such efforts draw on a broader African recognition that sport, particularly football, holds the capacity to reshape perceptions, generate opportunity and reinforce regional ties. In the context of contemporary global power dynamics, Morocco’s hosting of AFCON – and its deliberate positioning of the event as a continental milestone – challenges narratives that traditionally depicted African states as recipients rather than producers of global events. It also foregrounds a developmental ethos in which sporting events are leveraged to build human capital, foster continental fraternity and assert African agency.
Rather than viewing volunteerism as a logistical necessity, the OFPPT has underscored its cultural and civic dimensions. As Kiani remarked, the training helps reinforce values embedded in Moroccan identity — hospitality, cooperation and service — while also enabling volunteers to act as ambassadors of the country’s evolving image. This reframing of volunteerism aligns with emerging African-centred development discourses that prioritise community agency, bottom-up participation, and long-term skill building over event-based visibility.
Crucially, Morocco’s initiative underscores how African states are increasingly constructing infrastructures of competence and care around sporting events. By investing in local knowledge, embracing regional diversity, and centring African voices, Morocco’s strategy reflects a departure from externally imposed models of event organisation. It promotes instead a sovereign, inter-African logic of development, rooted in dignity, capability and collaboration.
As the tournament approaches, Morocco’s preparations — logistical, cultural and diplomatic — highlight the power of sport as more than entertainment. They affirm its potential as a vehicle for social cohesion, youth engagement and the articulation of African futures shaped by African hands.
