2024 Elections: Check out Bawumia and Mahama's plans for the development of sports

As the 2024 general elections draw close, the candidates for the two main political parties in Ghana have outlined their major plans for developing sports and football in the country.

As they embark on campaigns to seek the support of Ghanaians and win the 2024 elections, John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party have made known their plans for sports development amid widespread perception that Ghana sports, particularly football has reached an all-time low.

While the economy will form the heart of discussions ahead of the elections, sports will have a prominent feature and in their initial statements, Bawumia and Mahama have hinted at how they intend to solve the issues in the event of winning the elections.

John Mahama

John Mahama’s sports promise focused largely on reviving the Ghana Premier League and the Black Stars.

John Mahama noted that the Black Stars suffered an early exit from the 2023 AFCON because the local league is almost dead and that his administration would ensure the revival of the league.

"We just came from the Africa Cup of Nations, and we performed abysmally. We performed abysmally because we are not growing our football," observed Mahama.

"Before we used to have the Colts and every district used to organize its Colts’ league and they picked the prominent players from there. We used to have the academicals where the schools played against each other and we picked the promising players from there before we come to U-17 and then all the other age groups. Unfortunately, all that has collapsed and so we are going to work with the Football Association to start catching them young so that we can train them and give them to local teams to get experience.”

Mahama was speaking at Bongo in a community engagement with youth and women groups, chiefs, farmers and students as part of the NDC’s "Building Ghana Tour".

Dr Bawumia

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia delivered his first major address on the economy as leader of the New Patriotic Party on Wednesday, February 7, 2024.

At the University of Professional Studies Accra, Bawumia outlined his plans for the Ghanaian economy and sports featured prominently.

"My government will therefore, prioritise the creation of incentives for corporate sponsorship as a sustainable module of financing sports development and promotion for our national teams, including football, athletics and boxing at all levels."

"This will take the financial pressure off government, and also enable government to redirect more support to other sports disciplines."

"My government, as part of a broad sports development vision, will establish the Ghana School Sports Secretariat, which will be an agency under the ministry responsible for sports, in collaboration with other stakeholders such as the GES and sports federations.,"

EK