The African Cup of Nations which is underway in Morocco bears the fruits of grassroots investment and long-term vision. Comoros, Mozambique and Tanzania held their own while facing traditional powerhouses. Ninety-minutes performances are fruits of long-term grassroots investment in infrastructure, coaching, youth academies, and pathways transforming raw talent into well-rounded world-class athletes.

The parallels to agricultural and food systems transformation are striking and instructive. Having arable land and favorable growing conditions does not automatically produce agricultural transformation. Morocco, one of the countries pulling ahead, has built a solid food processing industry representing 6 per cent of its GDP. Egypt and South Africa sit in the same league with sustained investments in essential foundations: research institutions, extension systems, quality seed development, soil health programs, market infrastructure, and access to finance.

Morocco’s agricultural sector, similar to its football infrastructure, today is unrecognizable compared to twenty years ago. The Green Morocco Plan, launched in 2008, was the driver making agriculture grow over 20 per cent of the Kingdom’s total exports by 2023. Success emerged from patient, strategic, long-term commitment to building and sustaining.

The lesson from AFCON’s rising stars is that competing at the highest level is attainable. The secret sauce is through smart grassroots investment. Tanzania’s local league benefited from the injection of local capital in Simba and Yanga as investing in youth creates long-term value. The same long-term perspective must guide agricultural and nutritional transformation. Countries seeking to close the gap with regional leaders need to invest in agricultural research stations, farmer training programs, seed multiplication systems, rural road networks, storage facilities, and financial inclusion. The impact is intergenerational as one must understand that visible results may take a decade or more.

Yet, an overlooked catalyst of athlete transformation and team performance is nutrition. Diet quality is a cornerstone of athletic performance, affecting everything from reaction time to injury resilience. Chronic under-nutrition in young athletes poses a double threat: it undermines current training results and risks permanent physical damage. Ultimately, children who suffer from nutritional stunting face a lifelong disadvantage, often losing the physical potential required for competitive sports. The intersection of sports and nutrition offers a particularly powerful lens for understanding this imperative. Africa is indisputably the world’s reservoir of athletic talent ranging from middle-distance running to football and basketball. Yet many of these raw athletes grow up in communities facing malnutrition and food insecurity.

Brazil offers an instructive parallel. One of the world’s greatest football nations has long grappled with the relationship between athletic excellence and nutritional security. The Bolsa Família Program,  Brazil’s conditional cash transfer initiative, combined immediate poverty alleviation with long-term human capital development through conditionalities requiring school attendance and health checkups. The program improved child nutrition. Brazil understood that producing world-class athletes was not the end goal. The opportunity lay in enabling all children to reach their full potential by addressing nutritional foundations systematically.

This paradox underscores why long-term investment in nutrition-sensitive food systems transformation is one of the missing ingredients in realizing human potential. Imagine the multiplier effect if the same communities producing Olympic champions, CAF champions, etc. also benefited from robust food systems delivering adequate nutrition from infancy through adolescence. The athletes we celebrate today succeeded despite nutritional challenges. While not all will illuminate global stages in sports, science, arts, or entrepreneurship, the transformative power of the African continent for Africa, and the world, lies in food systems delivering consistent nutritious and safe diets.

Countries investing in sports infrastructure increasingly recognize this connection. Morocco’s football academies affirm the inseparable nature of athletic performance and proper nutrition. Sports excellence is primarily an investment in agricultural transformation and nutrition-sensitive food systems. It extends to everything else a country aspires to achieve.

Commentators are not shy from critiquing tactical mistakes, highlighting systemic weaknesses, or identifying areas where teams need improvement. This candor, far from being pessimistic, enables course correction and continuous improvement. Agricultural development needs the same forthrightness. What interventions are genuinely working? Which policy reforms are stalling? Which value chains show genuine promise?

The grassroots investment principle is particularly crucial. Just as football excellence is not built at the national team level, agricultural transformation can’t be achieved by focusing solely on large commercial farms while neglecting smallholder farmers. The foundation must be broad: village-level extension agents, accessible input dealers, local processing facilities, rural financial services, farm-to-market roads connecting producing areas to consumption centers. And the private sector has, like in football, a critical role to play. CRDB in Tanzania and Stanbic Bank in Uganda are playing a catalytic role in agricultural transformation with long-term bets on sectors with genuine growth potential.

To compete with Morocco’s agricultural dominance, nations must match the long-term discipline of an AFCON contender. Success requires moving beyond political cycles to invest in the "invisible" groundwork: robust institutions, integrated market systems, and firm-level capabilities. Just as elite athletes train for years before taking the pitch, true agricultural transformation depends on the unglamorous strengthening of seed systems, soil health, and digital finance.

Just as Africa’s dominance in global sports proves the power of raw talent backed by investment, the continent’s vast agricultural potential; its land, climate, and workforce await a similar transformation. Realizing this potential requires the AFCON playbook: shifting from short-term fixes to long-term grassroots investment, rigorous performance honesty, and treating the private sector as a strategic partner rather than a mere financier.

When the final whistle blows on January 18, the debate over whether transformation is possible will be settled; the brilliance of AFCON’s rising stars is all the proof we need. The real question remains: will African nations and their private sectors match that excellence with the sustained, relentless commitment required to transform Africa’s agriculture for the continent’s present?

Carl Manlan is an African development finance expert specializing in agriculture, nutrition, and food systems. He has held senior leadership roles in major international institutions, focusing on long-term investment strategies to drive structural transformation across African economies.