Manchester City and Midea Are Building Football Pitches Across Five African Cities

When Manchester City, Midea and local NGO Diski Nine9 unveiled a refurbished community pitch in Soweto earlier this month, the easy read was a feel-good CSR moment. The bigger picture is a global appliance brand executing one of the most coordinated football strategies on the continent.

On 16 June — South Africa's National Youth Day — the three partners opened a revitalised pitch at the Protea Glen Sports Centre in Johannesburg. The day brought 150-plus kids into a football and netball festival, 100-plus spectators, product donations, and an on-site brand exhibition, capped by an official ribbon-cutting alongside City of Johannesburg officials.

It's a genuine community win. It's also one node in something much larger.

This isn't a one-off — it's a five-city program. The Soweto pitch is part of a wider Midea–Manchester City community football initiative rolling out across Lagos, Luanda, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Rabat. Five projects, five markets, one continent-wide commitment to youth and community development — a deliberate footprint rather than a single activation.

Midea is an African brand deepening its roots, not a newcomer. Having launched in South Africa back in 2013, Midea has grown into a leading air-treatment name with a national sales and service network. Initiatives like this aren't about getting noticed for the first time — they're about converting an established commercial presence into genuine brand affinity, in the communities where the company already does business.

Football is the throughline. The Manchester City community partnership doesn't sit alone. Midea is the Official Sponsor of the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations 2025, and from the 2026/27 season the brand will appear on the sleeve of FC Barcelona. Grassroots pitches, continental tournaments and elite club shirts — Midea is using the full football pyramid to build affinity at every level, with Africa squarely in frame.

For a brand competing across the continent's home-appliance market, sport is the most efficient way to build trust at scale — and Midea is treating it as core strategy, not a side gift. When the world's number-one appliance brand wires AFCON, Barcelona and five African community pitches into a single push, it's a signal of how seriously global brands now take the continent's consumers.

Speaking about the project, Diski Nine9 said:

"We are deeply grateful to Manchester City and Midea for investing in a community like Protea Glen. This pitch will give young people a safe space to play, develop their talent and dream bigger. Launching it on Youth Day made the moment even more powerful, because it reminded us that when we invest in young people, we are investing in the future of the country."

Mr. Bright Yao, General Manager of Midea Africa, put it in plain terms:

"Partnering with Manchester City and Diski Nine9, we are proud to provide local youth with a safe space to grow and pursue their dreams. This pitch, along with our product donations, reflects Midea's enduring commitment to uplifting African communities and making life better across the continent."

A safe, quality facility for Protea Glen's young people stands on its own as a win. Layered into a five-city program and a football portfolio that runs from Soweto to the Camp Nou, it's also a blueprint for how brands build for the long term in Africa.