By John M. Rosenberg

Fifty years ago, I was the youngest ticket buyer at the Civic Center in Rochester, Minnesota, watching via closed-circuit satellite the Rumble in the Jungle between heavyweight champion George Foreman and the four-on-one underdog Muhammad Ali, 7,300 miles away in Kinshasa, Zaire, today. the Democratic Republic of Congo. Immediately after Foreman’s eighth round pirouette to the canvas following a five-punch combination from Ali, I burst out of the arena and onto the city street, excitedly calling out to an indifferent traffic cop that Ali had won.

The fight not only marked the greatest thrill of victory I have ever experienced at a sporting event, but it also solidified the already growing connection this Minnesota teenager had with Africa.

Before the fight, the satellite transmission showed the stadium filled with Zairian dancers polyrhythmically praising their glorious leader, President Mobutu Sese Seko, who had lured this adrenaline-filled fight to Kinshasa with a $10 million purse. . A gigantic paternalistic portrait of Mobutu in his leopard skin hat which dominates the arena below. The atmosphere, even on the other side of the globe, was thick, penetrating, bewitching.

Mobutu, known as America’s favorite dictator, was not the first of his kind to stage a sporting event as a public relations smokescreen, but the Rumble in the Jungle was the first event of his kind to global reach in Africa.

That the fight took place is something of a miracle. The continent itself, much less Zaire, had no experience with satellite technology or hosting events of this scale. It was also unlikely that a black American boxing promoter, in the form of a brilliant but slippery ex-con named Don King, whose only previous experience was having organized an exhibition boxing match in his native Cleveland , can bring the fight together.

Today, it is difficult to imagine the stature that boxing held in the world of sport for almost a century. The sweet science, as it is called, has had several golden ages, the pinnacle of which was the period of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman of the sixties and seventies. With championship matches in countries like Zaire, Malaysia and the Philippines, it was a time when the title of heavyweight champion of the world lived up to its label.

For the Africans and for Ali himself, the fight was considered a homecoming. With his grace, talent and cunning, Ali truly becomes one with the African people.

Of course, it was much more than this fight that spurred my love for the continent. For me, Africa offered something different, far from the headlines like the Cold War and Watergate.

When I was a child, I pored over the Colliers Encyclopedia directories that my parents purchased at great expense for my older brothers. The editions of the early 1960s particularly captured my imagination, full of stories of brand-new nation-states emerging one after the other onto the world stage, like stars born in the molecular clouds of space. Everyone had their own George Washington, with names like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyere, Jomo Kenyata. I couldn’t help but wonder what these places and people were like so far from my American Midwest.

Today, half a century after the fight, Africa has also given me a sense of encouragement, boasting a can-do attitude that, like Muhammad Ali, a five-to-one underdog to Kinshasa is a story of surpassing the impossible. dd

Over the coming decade, Africa will experience the strongest economic growth of any continent. Its middle class is growing. Its technology sector has enormous potential and, unlike the Rumble in the Jungle where no African-owned satellites existed, 17 African countries have placed more than 60 operational satellites in orbit by 2024.

To fully understand Africa in the 21st century, we must understand its radically different state of mind from that of 1974. Africa’s time on the world stage has arrived, and its inhabitants no longer tolerate being told what to do, whether from dictators or the outside world. In the aftermath of Rumble in the Jungle, author Norman Mailer wrote that Ali won because he fought the way he wanted…against the ropes, exactly where everyone, including Ali’s own manager ‘Ali, didn’t want him to be.

Like Ali, Africa faces obstacles as it sees fit. In Ali’s words: “The impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a statement. It’s a challenge. The impossible is potential. The impossible is temporary. The impossible is nothing.

John M. Rosenberg is the founder of Rossyln Group International and an expert on African affairs.