Bouchra Karboubi: Meet Moroccan Policewoman Who Officiated Harambee Stars Match Against Chad

Harambee Stars played out a goalless draw against Chad in a friendly match in Marrakech, Morocco on Saturday and the match was officiated by a female referee in Bouchra Karboubi.

Karboubi might have gone under the radar as focus was on the players on the pitch but she is one of the best in the business and among the top referees in Africa.

The 38-year-old is not your ordinary referee as she has broken the glass ceiling, having had to overcome religious and societal barriers to realise her dream while she also juggles her duties on the pitch with her job as a policewoman while she also wears the hat of a mother.

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Bouchra Karboubi is a 38-year-old Moroccan referee who is highly experienced, having officiated at the Women’s World Cup, Africa Cup of Nations and the Paris 2024 Olympics.

At the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, there six female referees appointed but only one was given the mandate of centre referee.

That role was handed Karboubi, who became the second woman, and first Arab, to officiate a men’s AFCON match following in the footsteps of Rwanda’s Salima Mkansaga, who made history at the 2021 tournament.

Karboubi had made her AFCON debut in Cameroon in 2021, when she worked as a VAR but being at the centre of attention was a whole different experience when she led an all-female crew, a first at the tournament, that included assistant referees Diana Chikotesha of Zambia and Cameroon’s Carine Atezambong to officiate the AFCON 2023 match between Nigeria and Guinea-Bissau on January 25, 2024.

In 2023, Karboubi made another piece of history when she became the first Arab referee to officiate at the Women’s World Cup in New Zealand and Australia, taking charge of the match between defending champions USA and Vietnam.

In 2022, she became the first female referee to officiate the final match of Morocco’s Throne Cup, having set a personal milestone two years earlier, when she became the first female referee to oversee a match in Morocco's top-tier professional football league, the Botola Pro 1.

However, it was not easy to become a referee coming from a conservative community that could not fathom a woman in sports.

Her brothers tore up her refereeing flags to discourage her from the sport because it was ‘shameful for a girl to wear shorts and stand on the same pitch with men’ and it was not until her father watched her officiate a men’s game in 2007 that he started to support the career she chose.

When she is not overseeing football matches, the mother of one is enforcing the law in Morocco as she is a police inspector based in Meknes, a city in the northern part of the country.

"Being a policewoman, for me, means applying justice. As a referee, it's me who applies the law and it's a win-win because it's a job and it's my passion and they are linked to each other,” she told the BBC in February 2024.

"Refereeing helped me a lot as an athlete to be a good police officer, and being a police officer helped me have a strong personality on the field as a referee,” she added.

Karboubi has managed to balance work and her role as a mother to her seven-year-old daughter, showing the delicate balance professional women have to keep up with but she is proud to wear all her hats.

"It's true that at work, I’m a police officer and on the field, I'm a referee. But at home, I am a woman, I am the woman of the house and the mother of a daughter," she said.

To show how highly she is rated, Karboubi was voted Referee of the Year at the 2024 CAF Awards a major honour and endorsement to her career.

“For me, this award is a source of positive energy and additional motivation to double my efforts. I am fully aware that while reaching the top is difficult, staying there is even harder. This motivates me to continue working hard to maintain this level of excellence,” she told the CAF website in March 2025.

Looking into the future, more history beckons as Karboubi is a candidate for the 2026 Men's World Cup and 2027 Women's World Cup for which she has ambitions to referee the final which she says would be a crowning achievement.