It will not surprise you but the number of Kenyan footballers ever shortlisted for a CAF Award can be counted on one hand. In fact, they are so few they can fit in a saloon car with one of them taking the steering wheel.
Before Valerie Nekesa highlighted the avalanche of nominations Kenya has bragged about this week in the CAF Awards 2024 courtesy of the trailblazing Kenya Women’s U17 team, the Junior Starlets, you will have to go back to 2012 for the last time a Kenyan footballer was shortlisted for a CAF Award.
Valerie Nekesa is the zestful 17-year old who scored and assisted Kenya’s first ever goals at a FIFA tournament when the Junior Starlets defeated Mexico Women U17 2-1 at the 2024 FIFA Women’s U17 World Cup in the Dominican Republic last month, orchestrating the heroics which took Anguka Nayo with its throbbing beats and hypnotising lyrics to the world.
She has been shortlisted for the 2024 CAF Young Player of the Year Award, women’s category and will contest the award with nine other girls; two Cameroonians, an Egyptian, a Ghanaian, two Moroccans, two Nigerians and one South African.
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Nekesa’s demonym, Kenyan, singles her out as the only East African deemed worthy of contention for the award. With the week Kenyans have endured following Uganda’s and Tanzania’s qualification to the 2025 African Cup of Nations, it feels necessary to remind our East African neighbours that we beat them on this one.
The ceremony for the 2024 CAF Awards will be held on Monday, December 16, 2024, in Marrakech, Morocco where Nekesa will be joined by her coach, Mildred Cheche, who has been shortlisted for the women’s category of 2024 CAF Coach of the Year Award.
Cheche’s shortlisting is in recognition of her being the architect of Kenya’s qualification to the 2024 FIFA Women’s U17 World Cup, Kenya’s first ever appearance in a FIFA tournament of any age group or gender.
That historic achievement, the silver-lining to reign of the current scandal-ridden Football Kenya Federation, has seen the Kenya Women’s U17 team earn the right to challenge for the women’s category of the 2024 CAF National Team of the Year Award.
Other contenders will Cameroon U-20, Malawi, Morocco, Morocco U-20, Nigeria, Nigeria U-17, Nigeria U-20, South Africa, and Zambia.
Never in recent history has Kenya been this heavily represented at the CAF Awards, a fact that says a lot about the quality of Kenyan football and its footballers. We are good from far but far from good.
In 2012, the much-acclaimed Victor Wanyama was among three nominees for that year’s CAF Most Promising Talent of the Year Award which was won by an Egyptian footballer called Mohamed Salah. A lot of people now know him as Mo Salah.
The other nominee for that award was a Senegalese player called Pape Moussa Konate, whom you would be forgiven if you are only getting to know about him today because clearly, he faded into oblivion somewhere along the way.
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Had social media been the rage in 1987, tech-savvy Kenyans at that moment in time would be circulating posters of Ambrose Ayoyi and Peter Dawo in WhatsApp groups.
For their performances with Harambee Stars and Gor Mahia in that magical year, when Kenya won silver in the 1987 All Africa Games and Gor Mahia shook the continent by winning the Mandela Cup, the duo were shortlisted for the prestigious African Player of the Year Award.
The award was eventually won, with 130 points, by the mercurial Algerian Rabah Madjer, whose nonchalant back heel goal won Porto the 1987 European Cup but Dawo and Ayoyi had more than lived to their nicknames, Omuga (Luo for Rhinoceros) and Golden Boy, by finishing 7th and 9th respectively.
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Dawo earned 21 points, four more than the legendary Abedi Pele Ayew of Ghana and Olympique Marseille who was 8th with 17 points.
Ayoyi, despite finishing 9th with 15 points, could also brag of some giant-slaying as the venerated Cameroonian Roger Milla finished 10th with 14 points.
Before Dawo and Ayoyi in 1987, there was another Gor Mahia legend, Nahashon “Lule” Oluoch who, in 1979, blazed the trail of Kenyans being shortlisted for CAF awards.
That year Gor Mahia reached the end of their heroics in humiliating fashion, losing 8-0 on aggregate in the final of the 1979 Mandela Cup to Canon Yaounde of Cameroon, the then team of the fabled Cameroonian goalkeeper Thomas N’kono who went on to be named the African Player of the Year for 1979, becoming the first goalkeeper to win the award after amassing 55 points.
CAF Awards 2024 – Player of the Year nominees
Oluoch garnered nine points but it was enough to see him rank 5th, the highest position ever attained by a Kenyan footballer shortlisted for the African Footballer of the Year award.
Among the footballers that Oluoch finished ahead of was Mudashiru Babatunde Lawal, who in the following year captained Nigerian to their first AFCON victory on home soil.
While recognising Oluoch, Dawo, Ayoyi, and Nekesa, it is worth sparing some honourable mentions.
First, to Jonathan Niva, Kenya’s player-manager at the 1972 African Cup of Nations, a tournament that marked Harambee Stars’ maiden appearance at the continental showpiece.
Niva, who passed on in 2001, was the first Kenyan footballer to be ranked continentally when the France Soccer Weekly magazine compiled a list of the best footballers on the continent.
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In the 2010s, the talents of Jesse Were, Michael Olunga, and Victor Wanyama did not go unnoticed. In that decade, the trio were nominated for CAF Awards but never went as far as being shortlisted.
In 2016, Jesse Were, then playing for Zambian club Zesco United was nominated for the CAF Africa-based African Player of the Year, an award you should not mention in front of a Tanzanian because they will remind you Mbwana Samatta won it in 2015 for his performances with Congolese club TP Mazembe.
During that decade, Victor Wanyama was nominated for the CAF African Footballer of the Year thrice (2015, 2016, and 2018) but we never got to see how he looked in a suit because, on all three occasions, he never made the final shortlist.
Michael Olunga was also nominated for the same award in 2017 but it never resulted in a trip to the tailor as he did not make the final shortlist.
It is 45 years from Nahashon Oluoch to Valerie Nekesa and hope springs eternal that 2024 will be the year a CAF award lands on our shores.