On July 9, 2011, South Sudan seceded from Sudan to become the world’s newest nation. That weekend, its new national football team played a match in the capital Juba. Within months, the Confederation of African Football granted the squad provisional membership, and in July 2013 President Salva Kiir named the team Bright Star. Emphasising the importance of unity as a necessary element for national development, Kiir opined that sports should be encouraged to promote that goal.

While the team may be in its adolescence, Sudanese football is a vestige of the country’s colonial past stretching between 1899 and 1956 in what was known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. My recently published journal article explores this history, and examines how the game was linked with various ethnic, religious and political projects.

South Sudan has been through a tumultuous time since 2011 independence. Understanding the game’s early influences can help shed light on the current context. These insights are as enlightening as they are discouraging.

Football in colonial Sudan

In the early 20th century, football in what is today Sudan was played at Khartoum’s elite Gordon Memorial College. Gordon played annual matches against the Khartoum Military School. Sudan’s oldest football stadium was built in Atbara in 1927, and the Sudan Football Association was established in the 1930s. The number of clubs quickly rose from 36 in the 1936-1937 season to 103 in 1945-1946.

In Southern Sudan, the growth of football was linked with Christian missionaries who entered the South in the early 1900s following the destruction of the Mahdist regime. Football was played at the Church Missionary Society’s first Southern mission site at Malek and at Yei, where African and non-African participants competed.

The Nugent missionary school was the king of Southern football during the colonial years. An elite and multi-ethnic intermediate school, the pitch became a site where inter-ethnic competition was encouraged.