While this year’s Christmas period in the UK is as always jammed with competitive football, in Spain the winter break has begun, with most players heading home or away for a well-earned break. Some of the better ones though are hanging around at least until this Thursday (December 29th) for the fourth annual fundraising Champions for Africa game, organised by Sevilla striker Frédéric Kanouté. Being played in Valencia’s Mestalla Stadium, it’s a friendly involving lots of big-name Spanish and African players, with the proceeds going to fund emergency nutrition programmes in the Horn of Africa.

Both teams will be jammed with big names. A ‘Selección Champions’ made up of Spanish league players, co-captained by Valencia’s Roberto Soldado and Levante’s Sergio Ballesteros, will take on an ‘Africa United’ side comprised of African players and captained by Kanouté (although a knee injury means he might actually play). Valencia’s Éver Banega and Villarreal’s Diego Alves are among the other internationals lined up to feature.

This is the fourth year Kanouté has organised the game, which has previously taken place at the Sánchez Pizjuán (Sevilla), Santiago Bernabéu (Madrid) and Vicente Calderón (Atlético). Last December 40,000 paying fans at the Calderón watched a José Mourinho-managed Africa United featuring players such as Kanouté, Carlos Kameni and Lass Diara win 3-2 against a La Liga selection which included Fernando Gago, Sergio Canales, Kun Agüero and Juan Valeron. Here’s the highlights on YouTube. In previous years Thierry Henry, Samuel Eto’o, Emmanuel Adebayor and many other superstars have taken part.

The 2011 game and related activities and events raised around €600,000, which was divided between UNICEF’s Schools for Africa programme, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Kanouté’s own personal charitable foundation. This organisation has branches in the UK, France, Spain and Mali and opened its flagship project, the Sakina Children’s Village, last September. Sakina is a housing complex and health centre in rural Mali which should house 100 children by next summer.

This year’s proceeds are going to feed children in east Africa, where last July the UN declared a famine, something they had not done since Ethiopia in 1990. The Champions for Africa website says the crisis has been worsened by rising food prices caused by ongoing armed conflict in Somalia and a huge influx of refugees into Kenya and Ethiopia. For more info and some ‘fast facts’ on the current situation check out the UNICEF site here.

This type of work is not untypical of Kanouté, who has always been among the more interesting of footballers. When at Spurs he annoyed David Pleat by declaring for his father’s homeland Mali to play in the 2004 African Cup of Nations. At Sevilla in 2007 he refused to wear a jersey sponsored by a betting company as that conflicted with his religious beliefs. He has been fined by the Spanish League for celebrating a goal by revealing a T-shirt supporting the Palestinian cause. Just this month he published a kind of biography (in Spanish) called ‘Looking to the Sky’, where he discusses his background, career and beliefs.

I spoke with Kanouté about his charity work earlier this year for a piece which appeared in April’s When Saturday Comes magazine. He said his foundation concentrates practical things like providing employment and educational opportunities, rather than any Bob Geldof or Bono style grandstanding. When it was put it to him that not all footballers were as socially committed as he was, and seemed to be pampered and ignorant egoists, he countered that it was not just footballers in Europe / the West who could do more to help those less fortunate than themselves.

“Everyone blessed with wealth and opportunities, not just footballers, has a responsibility to help those less fortunate,” he reckons. “Not just these causes and projects, there are also other similar deserving causes. Everyone should make charitable giving a natural habit in their normal lives. The actual amount is not important as we can only give within our ability.”

It’s a convincing argument. The tagline for this week’s game is “We need 50,000 champions in the stands to save the lives of 10,000 children in the Horn of Africa”. Readers in or close to Valencia can buy tickets at €20 each online here. Anyone in Spain can text ‘UNICEF’ to 28028 and three packages of healthy food will be sent to children who need them (texts cost €1.42). Anyone with access to a credit card can donate as much as they like by clicking here.