African sports brands feature at Cup of Nations
International football competition the Africa Cup of Nations kicked off for the thirty-fourth time on January 13 and will run until February 11, with Ivory Coast as the host country.
The competition was originally scheduled to take place in 2023, but was delayed by floods.
There are 24 teams taking part, wearing kit from an admirable array of suppliers.
Puma is supplying kit to the biggest number of teams in the competition, six in total: Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal and Guinea.
Other major sports brands, adidas and Nike, only have one team each in the competition, Algeria and Nigeria, respectively.
Other international brands that are represented include Kappa, with Tunisia, Le Coq Sportif, with South Africa, Umbro, with the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Macron with Equatorial Guinea.
Portuguese brand Lacatoni is the supplier of clothing to two competing teams, both from Lusophone countries: Mozambique and Angola.
There are a number of kit suppliers that are also from the international market but are slightly less high profile. These include Singapore-based One All Sports, which is supplying Cameroon, German company Saller, which is supplying Gambia, Austria-based Tempo Sport, supplying Cape Verde, and Dutch brand Vecchio supplying Namibia.
Finally, and possibly most interestingly of all, the remaining six teams have kit suppliers with African origins. Mali has clothing from Airness, a company founded in France by former boxer Malamine Koné, who is originally from Mali. Mauritania’s national team is using kit from a Moroccan company, AB Sport.
Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Tanzania and Zambia have each teamed up with a kit supplier from their own countries. The companies concerned are, respectively, Tovio, Guisport, Sandaland and KoPa.
Image: Government of Ivory Coast.
