Nashon Adero  Geospatial & Systems Modelling Expert (Dr.-Ing., Mining Engineering Surveys) | Author & Policy Analyst | Youth Mentor & Founder, Impact Borderless Digital (IBD) | Lecturer, Patron – Enactus Club, Taita Taveta University August 16, 2025

First developed for the 2018 FIFA World Cup with only six variables, refined in 2022 to nine variables, and now field-tested on the African Nations Championship (CHAN2024)—ACPreMo maps mean marginal advantages (MMA) to expected goal differences. Thus, ACPreMo rides on the electrifying fun of football fans to make play-based methods of learning STEM subjects universal entertainment, building young minds into mature scientific solution finders. Monte Carlo simulation played a big part in arriving at this benchmark. The group stages are an important space for model calibration. Just like reinforcement learning in AI, the model is adjusted against the actual outcomes during group stages to gain more robust team-specific scores on each of the nine variables. To entertain fans in a new, more creative way that demystifies mathematics during the ongoing African Nations Championship (CHAN), the model has been adapted to rate the local leagues and predict the CHAN2024 outcomes.

Why Like a Surveyor?

Nora Bateson coined the term symmathesy to describe living systems as mutual, contextual learning processes rather than fixed “machines.” The same systems thinking approach can be applied to football teams, with sides adjusting shape, tempo, and risk as players read each other and the opponent to make their team a co-learning organism rather than a laundry list of individual players. In football games, spatial thinking is even more critical. Added to structured scientific inquiry, the football pitch becomes a living classroom for socialising science and mathematics through competitive games. There is a way surveyors are trained to think with their hands doggedly on the accuracy and precision buttons. When this conditioned reflex is put into optimal use, phenomenal and transformational outcomes emerge, for personal and national development. Thirsty for an interesting career to pursue in a world craving precise and organised solutions across space over time? Surveying or geospatial disciplines may just be the cold spring waters to quench that inordinate thirst. As college programmes, they may take on names such as Surveying, Geomatics/Geospatial Engineering, or Geoinformatics/GIS.

ACPreMo’s Provenance and Philosophy

ACPreMo is Adero’s CHAN Prediction Model for predicting the winners of the CHAN2024 football matches in East Africa. A few words on its provenance. Simply passion, if not a crazy obsession, housed in the author’s (Adero’s) imagination, a Kenyan surveyor who reinterpreted football as a spatio-temporal optimalisation puzzle grounded in the accuracy and precision of shot angles and honed skillsets, further modified by geographical and psychological factors. The year 2018 would see this imagination peak during the FIFA World Cup. The first edition of the model was developed, starting with six variables. But the 2018 model could only predict the winners, not the goal differences. Come the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the model was revamped to include nine crucial variables, a mix of technical variables (i.e., team coherence, tactical inventiveness, score drive, honed skill set, tenacity gradient, and resistive nucleus), environmental and psychological variables (i.e., climate—including the boost from home advantage, and mentality premium), and the game-changing and stochastic stroke of luck—referred to as serendipity stroke in the model. The 2022 edition predicts goal differences as well, based on mean marginal advantages (MMA) graduated in step intervals of 1.7%. Monte Carlo simulation played a big part in arriving at this benchmark. The group stages are an important space for model calibration. Just like reinforcement learning in AI, the model is adjusted against the actual outcomes during group stages to gain more robust team-specific scores on each of the nine variables. To entertain fans in a new, more creative way that demystifies mathematics during the ongoing African Nations Championship (CHAN), the model has been adapted to rate the local leagues and predict the CHAN2024 outcomes. The model has been registering amazing prediction success by giving three detailed conditional scenarios for every match as the championship progresses in East Africa.

Maps, Models and Matchdays: ACPReMo Demystifies Football Probability

ACPreMo is one of the tools the Impact Borderless (IBD) youth mentorship platform uses to popularise STEM and inspire critical thinking and complex problem-solving. It demystifies mathematics to show “what the model mapped”, before and after the matches. Instead of post-hoc punditry, ACPreMo quantifies a Mean Marginal Advantage (MMA) from pre- and in-game signals, then maps that edge to expected goal difference (GD) using a neat system of inequalities as follows:

• 0–0.7% MMA → DRAW zone (noise dominates).
• 0.7% ≤ MMA < 1.7% → Transition towards a one-goal edge (late-game variance matters).
• MMA ≥ 1.7% → Sure 1-goal baseline; each additional 1.7% step ≈ +1 GD.

The inequalities can be represented graphically, as shown below.

Graph for ACPreMo goal difference interpretation. Credit: Nashon Adero

In post-match notes, ACPreMo highlights which variables moved the needle (e.g., switch-of-play triangles raising conversion; fatigue spikes lowering tenacity; red cards and penalties, and unexpected mentality boosts or random shockers from the perceived underdogs changing outcomes), then compares predicted goal differences (GD) with the actual full-time score. Thus, students learn to connect geometry, time, and decision-making—probability with purpose. The following real example on CHAN is a typical three-scenario narrative of the prediction envelope a user expects from ACPReMo. Uganda won the match 2-0 on 11th August 2025. Adero’s CHAN Prediction Model (ACPreMo) suggesting Uganda, buoyed by the past record, mentality premium, home advantage, and Museveni’s monetary incentive, now enjoys a baseline 3.4% mean marginal advantage over Niger in the #CHAN2024 Tournament. Based on the model’s goal conversion factor, this prediction envelope assures a ready 2-goal difference in favour of Uganda. Even if serendipity favours Niger in the model ratio 7:3 with penalties, red cards, and upsets considered, Niger is only likely to force a draw since the resulting 1.4% mean marginal advantage still falls below a sure one-goal difference by 0.3%. Finally, the worst scenario that will stun Niger is where serendipity swaps in favour of Uganda to open a humiliating 4-5 goal difference over Niger.

Final Thoughts and Lessons

ACPReMo is a creative product of imagination, structured into a model for reasoning and dispensing prediction envelopes that inform the most decisive variables of winning a football match. In the ongoing CHAN matches, hosted in East Africa, ACPReMo leaves an engaging social media trail through posts on X (including X Space live sessions), Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Teachers, students, leaders, coaches, and sports ministers should go beyond the entertainment of these posts and writings to gain insights for strengthening local leagues. From the group-stage results already posted under the #IBDSeries and #ACPreMo hashtags, it is evident that:

1. Mentality premium is critical to team performance, tilting the scales in favour of the teams energised by attractive incentives, home advantage, and scoring first or equalising promptly. The electrifying monetary incentives President Ruto and President Museveni have offered their home teams are a suitable case study in this respect. Thus, institutionalising such incentives to be systemic as opposed to being sporadic is recommended, and sports ministers need to spearhead these institutionalisation initiatives.
2. Serendipity is a profound game changer, given the significant ratio of 7:3. The usual overconfidence or complacency among the perceived frontrunners tends to switch serendipity in favour of the perceived underdog. A suitable case here is the Angola vs the DRC duel on 14th August 2025, which the DRC won 2-0 (see Angola vs the DRC model bar graph).
3. Corporations and educational institutions have important lessons to learn from this model in optimising team synergy and inspiring STEM education using play-based approaches.

Typical bar graph of the nine ACPreMo variables

“𝙀𝙭𝙥𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙂𝙄𝙎 𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙣𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙮 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙨, 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙨𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙩 𝙖 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚.”