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One thing that is guaranteed to drive me mad during any World Cup is unfair refereeing. And just like I don’t quite get the offside rule, I don’t get why the referee’s decision is final on occasions when clearly a wrong decision has been made. (Who mentioned Kaka.) But actually, ‘bad’ refereeing is just the tip of the iceberg if you’re talking about unfairness in the World Cup. If the allocation of team places in the World Cup was a referee’s decision, the referee would have been sacked for bias a long time ago.

Europe and Africa have a similar number of countries – 50 and 53. However, Europe is allowed 13 places in the World Cup while Africa is allowed only 5 (although this year they’ve been treated to an extra one as the host country is always given a place).  ‘The World Cup’.  To me the World Cup suggests that the best teams in the world would be able to secure a place as one of the last 32 teams to play in South Africa; I didn’t realise that if African teams played better than some European teams they might be denied a place because the rules dictate that Europe must have more teams.

And the World Cup isn’t the only place where the rules are skewed against Africa. In economics the unfairness of the World Cup is replicated across African countries. Let’s look at The World Trade Organisation. Again, it sounds fair enough – a body that oversees world trade? The referee of world trade?  Perhaps a regulatory body? – this would imply some degree of fairness and indeed, the WTO supposedly operates on a consensus basis, with equal decision-making power for all.

But if you look a bit deeper, in reality, many important decisions get made in a process whereby poor countries’ negotiators are not even invited to so called ‘closed door’ meetings – and then ‘agreements’ are announced that poor countries didn’t even know were being discussed. Many countries do not even have enough trade personnel to participate in all the negotiations or to even have a permanent representative at the WTO and are too poor to defend themselves from WTO challenges from the rich countries, and change their laws rather than pay for their own defence.

Yet decisions made at the WTO usually impact most heavily on the poor resulting in trade deals that are often disastrous for African and other poor countries where many of their people must survive on less than a dollar a day. Yes, in football unfair rules leave fans disappointed but in economics they can be the difference between one or two meals a day or even life and death.

Today Ghana play Germany. With the unbalanced allocation of World Cup places I guess some might say that Ghana should count themselves lucky – the Black Stars have a chance to shine.  But on the economics playing field the chances to break through are virtually non-existent.  Trade rules rigged against Africa in favour of rich nations have seen Ghana’s buoyant tomato and poultry industries devastated. ‘Liberalisation’ economic polices imposed by the WTO over a fifteen year period have cost Ghana’s population the equivalent of £350 per person – it’s as if everyone in Ghana stopped working for one and a half years.

Other trade practices also affect the lives of poor people around the world.  Currently bankers are betting billions of pounds on food and oil markets in secret, unregulated deals.  While they collect a tidy profit, their big-money gambling has made food prices around the world more expensive and more unpredictable. This directly affects millions of people in developing countries, who often struggle to feed their families and are forced deeper into poverty.

This is why the World Development Movement works with people in Ghana and across the world to stand up to these unjust practices and to bring change where it’s needed most.  And this is why I’ll be cheering for Ghana as they take on Germany tonight and also why I’ll continue to cheer them on as we join them in their fight for economic justice. Things can change. The referee’s decision does not have to be final.

Posted in: Germany, Ghana, Ghana-Germany

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.