LILLE, France — Nigerian goalkeeper Chiamaka Nnadozie built her reputation protecting her team’s net during the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco. This summer, she extended that instinct beyond the pitch, joining 10 other footballers in a campaign for polio vaccination in Africa that aims to safeguard something larger: the health of an entire generation of children across the continent.
A Campaign Built on Momentum
Nnadozie, alongside fellow Nigerian international Francisca Ordega and Cameroonian stars Ajara Nchout Njoya and Gabrielle Aboudi Onguené, is one of 11 women footballers from Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Nigeria supporting Kick Out Polio, a push for polio vaccination in Africa launched by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Since its founding in 1988, the GPEI has cut global polio cases by more than 99 percent and prevented an estimated 20 million cases of childhood paralysis. Campaigns like Kick Out Polio are working to extend this success into the continent’s last outbreak zones. The campaign first appeared during the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations and expanded this year to place women’s leadership at the center of its message during the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Real Progress, Real Gaps
The timing reflects genuine gains for polio vaccination in Africa. Detections of variant poliovirus across Africa fell 50 percent during the first six months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025. On Aug. 19, the World Health Organization confirmed that Burundi, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, the Republic of Congo and Uganda had all successfully interrupted transmission of the virus. Eight days later, African health ministers adopted a 10-year framework to protect those gains by strengthening national health systems long after eradication is achieved.
Progress has not reached every community. More than 180 polio detections have been recorded across Africa so far in 2026, concentrated in the Lake Chad Basin and the Horn of Africa, two of the region’s most conflict-affected and impoverished areas. In Chad, which anchors the Lake Chad Basin, 44.8 percent of the population lived below the national poverty line as of 2022, with rural border provinces running even higher, according to the World Bank.
Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, fares worse still: roughly seven in 10 people lived below the poverty line as of 2019, according to OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian coordination agency. These regions illustrate why polio outbreaks can be difficult to stop where insecurity, displacement, weak health infrastructure and low immunization coverage leave children unreached. The WHO has identified these factors as important drivers of continuing vaccine-derived poliovirus transmission, making efforts to close vaccination gaps particularly important in underserved communities.
A Survivor Turned Advocate
The stakes behind that data are personal for families across the region. In Kano State, northwestern Nigeria, Mariam Umar was paralyzed by poliovirus as a child, one of thousands left permanently disabled in a part of the country where poverty and conflict once slowed vaccination campaigns to a crawl. Rather than withdraw from her community, Umar has spent seven years working as a volunteer mobilizer with the polio eradication program, encouraging parents to vaccinate their own children. Her experience also shows the long-term consequences polio can have for individuals and families, reinforcing the importance of prevention through vaccination.
A Coalition Behind the Effort
Kick Out Polio operates under the GPEI, a partnership that includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, alongside national governments across Africa. The scale of that partnership shows in its campaigns: in mid-2026, a GPEI-backed drive in Zambia alone targeted roughly 3.9 million children under five for vaccination, illustrating the reach these partners coordinate across the continent. During the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, players encouraged fans to share accurate vaccination information, while Generation Zero Polio, a network of young advocates from West and Central Africa, issued an open letter urging African leaders to sustain political and financial commitments to eradication.
Across the continent, women like Umar make up much of the frontline workforce delivering vaccines, working as community mobilizers who reach children in remote and underserved areas that formal health systems often struggle to access. In Ethiopia, which has one of Africa’s largest active polio outbreaks, the health extension workforce leading vaccination efforts is majority women, according to the GPEI. They build trust with families, answer questions about vaccination and help navigate the barriers, financial and cultural alike, that otherwise leave children unreached.
Dr. Marie Belizaire, WHO regional emergency director, described finishing polio eradication as an investment not just in ending one disease, but in the health and future of an entire generation, according to Beyond Sport. As the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations drew renewed attention to women’s football across Africa, Kick Out Polio used that platform to keep its own goal in view: reaching every remaining child, in every underserved community, with the protection that routine polio vaccination in Africa provides.
– Naveeshaa Rengasamy
Naveeshaa is based in Lille, France and focuses on Celebs for The Borgen Project.
Photo: Flickr