ABSTRACT
In Buea, the capital of the Southwest Region of Cameroon, home to 130,000 Anglophone Cameroonians, the importance of football to everyday life is hard to escape. Every morning before 6:00 a.m., as the owners of grocery shops, boutiques, hair salons, restaurants, and bars prepare for the workday, young men jog up and down the main road that connects the town’s landmarks, including the bus station, the university campus, the stadium, the council building, and old Buea Town. Football clubs and academies are deeply embedded in Cameroon’s politics and economy. Their development reflects the country’s specific colonial experience, the nature of the postcolonial state since its 1961 independence, the economic shifts that have shaped the country’s economy since the early 1990s, and the transformations of global football market in 1990s and 2000s. Economic transformations on a global scale since the 1980s have destabilized previously predictable ways in which men around the world used to perform adult masculinity, especially through economic productivity.
