The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations is in full flight in Morocco, and South Africa is in the thick of it. Watching closely is a woman whose fingerprints are on some of the tournament’s most important firsts.
Janine Anthony has never lifted a trophy or worn a national jersey, yet few people have done more to make African women’s football visible, from a borrowed radio microphone in Owerri to the commentary booths of Rabat and Casablanca.
At the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, Anthony made history as the first African woman to lead football commentary at a major men’s tournament.
Her story begins in a traditional Nigerian household in the nineties, where football was the soundtrack of family life. She watched Maldini, Nesta and Beckham alongside her father, his cousins and nephews, and had no idea a female equivalent existed until Mercy Akide-Udoh and the Super Falcons appeared on the family screen.
“The day that I saw her brilliance, how she was so tenacious on the field, I said, that’s me. That’s definitely me. That’s definitely what I wanna do,” says Janine Anthony, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of LadiesMarch. Her parents had other ideas, and the professional game’s doors stayed shut.
“And the minute I saw her, I was her. And when I couldn’t really be that on the pitch, I did it off the pitch.”
International Football Broadcast Pioneer, Janine Anthony
Broadcasting arrived almost by accident. In 2012, still at university in Nigeria’s south-south, Anthony was pushed into a guest slot on Hot FM in Owerri by a friend who refused to let her turn it down. The minute the microphone went live, she was hooked. Back in Lagos she freelanced on Femi and the Gang at Nigeria Info FM, then co-created its female equivalent, Femi’s Divas, the all-women crew behind the Ladies Match radio show.
The crew mixed analysts, comics and advocates, some of whom barely followed sport, and the depth of their preparation floored her. “I think that really showed me that when women are given the opportunity or create space, they will get things done.”
From Hot FM in Owerri to BBC Sport, StarTimes and FIFA+, Anthony has told the story of African football on ever bigger stages.
Yet Ladies Match had 30 minutes on Sundays, 52 shows a year, while the women’s game went unreported for the other six days of the week. In 2015, inspired in part by Ann Odong’s pioneering Australian platform, Anthony recruited teenage volunteers through Twitter direct messages and took the project digital as LadiesMarch, the name adjusted for intellectual property reasons, the mission untouched.
She funded it herself, working multiple jobs to cover web hosting and accreditation to the Women’s Euros and other global events. “I just wanted women’s football to have a voice, to have a home. I wanted writers to have a space.” The payoff came at a WAFCON press conference, when she introduced herself and the coach lit up: federations, it turned out, had been using LadiesMarch for scouting reports on their opponents.
BBC Sport came calling in 2018, and for three years she worked as reporter, presenter and Team Lead of the West Africa Sports desk, funded at last to cover the women’s game. “Firstly, what I learned is make things so simple that my grandmother can understand.” Attracting new audiences, she says, matters more than retaining old ones, and representation is how you do it.
Then came history. After she filmed a street piece asking whether audiences would welcome a female commentator, made in the wake of the 2018 men’s World Cup, her bosses quietly took note. At the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, Anthony became the first African woman to lead football commentary at a major men’s tournament, heading an all-female BBC crew. She rehearsed into mirrors, through hair braiding sessions and skipping ropes, and drew Madagascar, famed for jaw-breaking names, among her first assignments.
“I saw the beast, I slayed the beast, and it opened a lot of doors on the continent.”
The next first arrived by direct message. A FIFA representative found her on LinkedIn ahead of the 2022 WAFCON in Morocco, and Anthony became the consultant who assembled CAF’s first all-female commentary teams, English and French crews working on site in Rabat and Casablanca. Laetitia Dembo and Gaëlle Moudio, whom she placed on CAF’s French-language world feed, are now credited as the first women to commentate a Women’s AFCON. “No one’s gonna find you in your house. Well, sometimes if you do delivery, but no one’s gonna find you in your house. So you’ve got to put yourself out there.”
Her storytelling range kept widening. On Premier League productions she interviewed Mikel Arteta, earned warm praise from Ian Wright, and produced features on Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané in their home countries, the latter requiring a small boat crossing to reach Bambali. At StarTimes she stepped from associate producer to first female presenter of the Bundesliga and Serie A when the scheduled presenter failed to arrive.
Equal pay runs through Anthony’s work, from her years of advocacy for the Super Falcons to the Locker Room Bonus at PawaTech.
And as a producer on All Roads Lead Down Under, the six-part FIFA+ series on the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, she watched players break down in tears telling stories no one had asked them before. “And what it showed me is that a lot of the results that we see on the pitch, 100%, is cooked off the pitch.”
That insight carried her into technology. As TikTok’s Sub-Saharan Africa Partnerships Lead for Sports and Gaming, Anthony built standalone content verticals, creator monetisation frameworks and the TikTok Awards in Africa, using women’s football clubs as her presentation decks and the phone as the great equaliser for underfunded teams.
At PawaTech, as Head of PR and Communications working across sponsorships, she helped deliver the Locker Room Bonus, which pays instant, equal mobile money rewards to women and men players alike.
“So it’s taken twelve years to get to a space where, I’m not saying opportunities, I’m saying pay for work.” Now at Snap Inc. as a consultant leading Creator Partnerships and Content Strategy in Africa, her vision is a creator economy where young Africans earn a living from home soil.
The mission has reached beyond sport too. In 2022 she was among the founding members of Black Foreigners in Ukraine, leading communications for the non-profit that raised funds and coordinated emergency relocations for African students, work covered by CNN, the BBC and ITV. “So no knowledge is a waste. I’ve never been deployed at anything like that, but I knew how to talk. I knew how to convince.”
Now consulting for Snap Inc. in Africa, Anthony is building a creator economy for the next generation of storytellers.
For all the firsts, Anthony remains a reluctant subject who rarely gives press and prefers the spotlight on others. Her message to the young girls of Nigeria and South Africa carries no such hesitation. “Make me your representation now. I’ve done it. I am living proof that it’s happened.”
She has followed gsport for the best part of a decade, she says, and even recalls featuring among the gsport Awards nominees along the way. “It’s incredible work that you do for South African sports, the awards, the features.”
Having built a platform of her own from nothing, she knows exactly what that work takes. As WAFCON plays out in Morocco, with women in the commentary booths she helped open, the visibility Janine Anthony has spent two decades building speaks for itself.
Main Photo Caption: Janine Anthony, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of LadiesMarch and the consultant behind CAF’s first all-female WAFCON commentary teams. All Photos: Supplied
Photo 2 Caption: At the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, Anthony made history as the first African woman to lead football commentary at a major men’s tournament.
Photo 3 Caption: From Hot FM in Owerri to BBC Sport, StarTimes and FIFA+, Anthony has told the story of African football on ever bigger stages.
Photo 4 Caption: Equal pay runs through Anthony’s work, from her years of advocacy for the Super Falcons to the Locker Room Bonus at PawaTech.
Photo 5 Caption: Now consulting for Snap Inc. in Africa, Anthony is building a creator economy for the next generation of storytellers.
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Janine Anthony, a Global Architect of Women’s Football Firsts
The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations is in full flight in Morocco, and South Africa is in the thick of it. Watching closely is a woman whose fingerprints are on some of the tournament’s most important firsts.
Janine Anthony has never lifted a trophy or worn a national jersey, yet few people have done more to make African women’s football visible, from a borrowed radio microphone in Owerri to the commentary booths of Rabat and Casablanca.
Her story begins in a traditional Nigerian household in the nineties, where football was the soundtrack of family life. She watched Maldini, Nesta and Beckham alongside her father, his cousins and nephews, and had no idea a female equivalent existed until Mercy Akide-Udoh and the Super Falcons appeared on the family screen.
“The day that I saw her brilliance, how she was so tenacious on the field, I said, that’s me. That’s definitely me. That’s definitely what I wanna do,” says Janine Anthony, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of LadiesMarch. Her parents had other ideas, and the professional game’s doors stayed shut.
Broadcasting arrived almost by accident. In 2012, still at university in Nigeria’s south-south, Anthony was pushed into a guest slot on Hot FM in Owerri by a friend who refused to let her turn it down. The minute the microphone went live, she was hooked. Back in Lagos she freelanced on Femi and the Gang at Nigeria Info FM, then co-created its female equivalent, Femi’s Divas, the all-women crew behind the Ladies Match radio show.
The crew mixed analysts, comics and advocates, some of whom barely followed sport, and the depth of their preparation floored her. “I think that really showed me that when women are given the opportunity or create space, they will get things done.”
Yet Ladies Match had 30 minutes on Sundays, 52 shows a year, while the women’s game went unreported for the other six days of the week. In 2015, inspired in part by Ann Odong’s pioneering Australian platform, Anthony recruited teenage volunteers through Twitter direct messages and took the project digital as LadiesMarch, the name adjusted for intellectual property reasons, the mission untouched.
She funded it herself, working multiple jobs to cover web hosting and accreditation to the Women’s Euros and other global events. “I just wanted women’s football to have a voice, to have a home. I wanted writers to have a space.” The payoff came at a WAFCON press conference, when she introduced herself and the coach lit up: federations, it turned out, had been using LadiesMarch for scouting reports on their opponents.
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BBC Sport came calling in 2018, and for three years she worked as reporter, presenter and Team Lead of the West Africa Sports desk, funded at last to cover the women’s game. “Firstly, what I learned is make things so simple that my grandmother can understand.” Attracting new audiences, she says, matters more than retaining old ones, and representation is how you do it.
Then came history. After she filmed a street piece asking whether audiences would welcome a female commentator, made in the wake of the 2018 men’s World Cup, her bosses quietly took note. At the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, Anthony became the first African woman to lead football commentary at a major men’s tournament, heading an all-female BBC crew. She rehearsed into mirrors, through hair braiding sessions and skipping ropes, and drew Madagascar, famed for jaw-breaking names, among her first assignments.
The next first arrived by direct message. A FIFA representative found her on LinkedIn ahead of the 2022 WAFCON in Morocco, and Anthony became the consultant who assembled CAF’s first all-female commentary teams, English and French crews working on site in Rabat and Casablanca. Laetitia Dembo and Gaëlle Moudio, whom she placed on CAF’s French-language world feed, are now credited as the first women to commentate a Women’s AFCON. “No one’s gonna find you in your house. Well, sometimes if you do delivery, but no one’s gonna find you in your house. So you’ve got to put yourself out there.”
Her storytelling range kept widening. On Premier League productions she interviewed Mikel Arteta, earned warm praise from Ian Wright, and produced features on Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané in their home countries, the latter requiring a small boat crossing to reach Bambali. At StarTimes she stepped from associate producer to first female presenter of the Bundesliga and Serie A when the scheduled presenter failed to arrive.
And as a producer on All Roads Lead Down Under, the six-part FIFA+ series on the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, she watched players break down in tears telling stories no one had asked them before. “And what it showed me is that a lot of the results that we see on the pitch, 100%, is cooked off the pitch.”
That insight carried her into technology. As TikTok’s Sub-Saharan Africa Partnerships Lead for Sports and Gaming, Anthony built standalone content verticals, creator monetisation frameworks and the TikTok Awards in Africa, using women’s football clubs as her presentation decks and the phone as the great equaliser for underfunded teams.
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At PawaTech, as Head of PR and Communications working across sponsorships, she helped deliver the Locker Room Bonus, which pays instant, equal mobile money rewards to women and men players alike.
“So it’s taken twelve years to get to a space where, I’m not saying opportunities, I’m saying pay for work.” Now at Snap Inc. as a consultant leading Creator Partnerships and Content Strategy in Africa, her vision is a creator economy where young Africans earn a living from home soil.
The mission has reached beyond sport too. In 2022 she was among the founding members of Black Foreigners in Ukraine, leading communications for the non-profit that raised funds and coordinated emergency relocations for African students, work covered by CNN, the BBC and ITV. “So no knowledge is a waste. I’ve never been deployed at anything like that, but I knew how to talk. I knew how to convince.”
For all the firsts, Anthony remains a reluctant subject who rarely gives press and prefers the spotlight on others. Her message to the young girls of Nigeria and South Africa carries no such hesitation. “Make me your representation now. I’ve done it. I am living proof that it’s happened.”
She has followed gsport for the best part of a decade, she says, and even recalls featuring among the gsport Awards nominees along the way. “It’s incredible work that you do for South African sports, the awards, the features.”
Having built a platform of her own from nothing, she knows exactly what that work takes. As WAFCON plays out in Morocco, with women in the commentary booths she helped open, the visibility Janine Anthony has spent two decades building speaks for itself.
Main Photo Caption: Janine Anthony, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of LadiesMarch and the consultant behind CAF’s first all-female WAFCON commentary teams. All Photos: Supplied
Photo 2 Caption: At the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, Anthony made history as the first African woman to lead football commentary at a major men’s tournament.
Photo 3 Caption: From Hot FM in Owerri to BBC Sport, StarTimes and FIFA+, Anthony has told the story of African football on ever bigger stages.
Photo 4 Caption: Equal pay runs through Anthony’s work, from her years of advocacy for the Super Falcons to the Locker Room Bonus at PawaTech.
Photo 5 Caption: Now consulting for Snap Inc. in Africa, Anthony is building a creator economy for the next generation of storytellers.
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