The 35th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations 2025 kicks off in less than two months in Morocco. This major African football event is followed all over the continent, particularly on national television channels.

Recently, bosses of these French-language media outlets, united in a collective, sent a letter to the president of the CAF, Patrice Motsepe, to denounce the "discriminatory" conditions for acquiring the broadcasting rights for the competition.

They are demanding full access to all 52 matches from CAF.

They say they have secured rights for 33 matches of the tournament, while their English-speaking and Portuguese-speaking counterparts, and a non-African international pay-TV operator, have the rights to all 52 matches.

In the name of media sovereignty, fairness and the right of African populations to follow their flagship competition for free, these bosses of French-speaking national television stations are demanding full access to all 52 matches from CAF.

They are calling on President Patrice Motsepe to do everything possible to guarantee that the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations is accessible to all, regardless of linguistic background, because in reality, this competition transcends mere sport. It represents an event of pride, unity, and popular communion.

Do not "favor a dominant pay-TV operator in the French-speaking market of sub-Saharan Africa"

Therefore, we should not "favor a dominant pay-TV operator in the French-speaking market of sub-Saharan Africa, to the detriment of national public media, which are free and accessible to the greatest number of people," warns the collective, which includes the heads of RTS (Senegal), RTI and NCI (Ivory Coast), CRTV (Cameroon), RTG (Guinea), ANAMA (Chad), GGT (Gabon), RTB (Burkina Faso), ORTM (Mali) and ORTN (Niger).