Richard Akpokavie, President of the Ghana Olympic Committee, has urged a major overhaul of Ghana’s athlete scholarship system, stressing the need for deliberate investment in talented sportsmen and women through quality education and high-performance training programmes.

Speaking during an interview on Sporty Fm on the challenges facing Ghanaian athletes, Akpokavie questioned why the country is able to sponsor students to study abroad in other fields but struggles to create similar opportunities for top athletes.

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“Why can’t we give scholarships to our top athletes to go to the universities that we want them to go to?” he quizzed.

According to him, a proper scholarship structure would allow athletes to focus fully on their development without worrying about basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing.

“The scholarship is just providing a system such that the athlete will not worry about what to eat, what to drink, shelter, clothing. So all he does is he gets up, goes to school and trains,” he explained.

Akpokavie also revealed that some Ghanaian athletes were unable to participate in the ongoing African Athletics Championships because they are tied to scholarship commitments in the United States.

“One of the reasons why some of our athletes couldn’t come for this is very simple. They are on scholarship and the American universities are having competitions, so they can’t leave that and come and compete here,” he stated.

He argued that if Ghana had a well-organised scholarship system for athletes, local authorities would have greater flexibility in managing their participation in international competitions.

“Our scholarship system is not sophisticated. It’s not planned properly. It’s just ad hoc here and there,” he said.

Akpokavie proposed the creation of a centralised sports and academic development system where promising young athletes from secondary schools can be grouped together under one institution with proper technical supervision and training support.

“What stops us from getting all of them together in one school? It’s possible,” he noted.

PAH/JE

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