Orlando Pride and Zambia striker Barbra Banda has been voted the BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year for 2024.
Banda, 24, became the first Zambian woman to play football in Europe when she signed for Spanish side Logrono in October 2018, going on to score 16 goals in 28 matches for the club.
Little more than a year later, in early 2020, she joined Chinese Super League outfit Shanghai Shengli where she won the Golden Boot in her first season with twice the number of goals as the second-ranked player.
In March of this year, Orlando Pride paid Shanghai $740,000 (£581,000) to sign her – the second most expensive women’s signing in history, behind her Zambia team-mate Racheal Kundananji.
Banda made her senior international debut for Zambia in 2016. At the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, she became the first woman to score two hat-tricks in the same Olympic football tournament.
In 2022, despite being named in Zambia’s original squad for the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon), Banda was not selected for the tournament on gender eligibility grounds. The details of that decision have never been made fully clear.
The president of the Zambian FA said at the time that she had undergone a gender verification test and had not met the criteria for the competition. As a result, Zambia pulled her out of the tournament.
It was reported in 2022 that she had elevated levels of testosterone in that test – a hormone that can increase muscle mass and strength.
BBC Africa reported in 2023 that in the run-up to Wafcon 2022, Banda took medication to reduce her testosterone levels but those levels had not come down enough by the time the championship started.
“I do not like to dwell on the past, but I have just to focus on myself,” Banda told BBC World Service Sport when she was presented with her award.
“Whatever has happened in the past, it is the past, I am focusing on the new generation and where I am right now and just to focus on my career and the charity that I do back home in Zambia with a lot of people in the community. So that is my main focus right now.
“If I kept on thinking about what was going on in the past, mentally then I would not be where I am right now. But I feel like my mind is that strong and I know where I am coming from.”
