African Games: Inside Ghana’s enormous economic gamble

Ghana hosted the African Games this year while the country’s economy was on its knees. This was at a time when inflation was biting hard on the purchasing power of many Ghanaians, and many investors, both local and international, were forced to accept haircuts that diminished their investments and locked up their funds in a debt exchange programme. Dozens of transformative projects were abandoned due to lack of funds. However, the government found billions of cedis to organise a sports event that some countries in Ghana’s economic situation had passed on. The Fourth Estate’s Fiifi Anaman reflects on the paradox of prioritising a continental sports event amid pressing economic challenges…

Dan Kwaku Yeboah is trying to explain why debt-ridden Ghana chose to spend close to a quarter of a billion dollars to host the 2023 African Games.

It was an incongruous investment that came under heavy and harsh criticism from the press and the public.

Yeboah was the spokesperson of the Games’ Local Organizing Committee (LOC) – the man in the line of fire.

It’s a difficult task. He hesitates. He sighs. He is about to choose his words carefully.

“For a third-world country like Ghana, on the face of it, the expenditure was huge,” he finally admits to The Fourth Estate.

Yeboah is right. The amount of money Ghana spent on the Games, organized in March 2024, could have built at least 14 district hospitals at a cost of $ 16.8 million under the Agenda 111 initiative. It could have also put up at least 3,000 six-unit classroom blocks (GHC 1.2 million per unit) for schools under trees across the country.

Even worse, Ghana’s controversial expenditure was in the midst of what experts called its “worst economic crisis in a generation”, coming in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Russia-Ukraine war.

The crisis, which started to hit from 2020 – two years after Ghana won the rights to host the Games – was severe. In September 2023, scores of Ghanaians took to the streets for multi-day protests against unbearable living conditions. Late in 2023, Ghana’s inflation peaked at over 50%, amid steep depreciation of the cedi.

By the end of the first half of 2024, the total debt of Ghana’s central government stood at $47 billion, representing over 70% of the country’s GDP.

The Ghanaian government – reeling from the recession – had resorted to relief from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in May 2023, and were allocated a $3 billion Extended Credit Facility (ECF). This arrangement came with strict instructions to the government to control its spending.

Ghana subsequently received $600 million as the first tranche of the IMF bailout.

For context, the amount of money Ghana spent on the African Games represents just over a third of this amount.

Burdened Hosts

The model of the African Games requires the hosts to bear the entire cost of staging the competition.

Hosts do not receive funds from the African Union (AU), which owns the Games, or the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) and the Association of African Sports Confederation (AASC or UCSA), who are the co-organizers.

In fact, the host nation pays money to the AU after winning the rights to host the event. Yeboah says Ghana, who won the hosting rights in October 2018, paid over $1 million to that effect, bargaining down from an amount to $2.5 million.

This arrangement is unlike the Olympic Games, where the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the host country receives some support from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). For the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, for instance, the IOC contributed $1.7 billion towards the $8.2 billion estimated to have been spent on the Games.

The high cost of staging the African Games has long been problematic for a continent that has over 70% of the world’s least developed countries (LDCs).

Indeed, only 10 out of Africa’s 54 states have been able to host the Games in its close to 60-year history. Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria and Algeria have each hosted it twice.

The price to pay for organising the African Games since the turn of the millennium has been a drain on the public purse of host nations.

Nigeria spent just over $60 million in 2003 ($102 million in 2024, adjusted for inflation) to bring the Games to Abuja, according to the chief executive of their Games’ organizing committee, Amos Adamu.

In 2007, Algeria invested more than $100 million ($152 million today) to host the Games in Algiers, per an AllAfrica report.

Zambia, who were scheduled to host the 2011 Games, pulled out in December 2008 citing the high cost.

The Zambians decided to rather invest what they would have spent on the Games in “enhancing food security in the wake of the global economic crisis”, according to then government spokesperson Ronnie Shikapwasha.

Mozambique stepped in to save the situation with big money, spending an estimated $250 million ($350 million today) to stage the Games in Maputo, relying on funding from China and Portugal, according to an Association for Educational Assessment in Africa (AEAA) journal article.

In 2015, during the Games’ 50th anniversary, inaugural hosts Congo Brazzaville returned to invest $60 million ($78 million today) in the competition, according to Leon Alfred Opimbat, then the Sports and Physical Education Minister.

Four years later, a research paper authored by Abderrazak El Akari revealed Morocco sank $48 million ($59 million today) into organizing the Games in Rabat, stepping in after Equatorial Guinea withdrew from hosting due to economic problems.

The Ghana Case

For Accra 2023, Ghana spent $243 million in total in order for the continent to “Experience the African Dream”, as the Games’ theme said.

“Ei!” Doris Okine exclaims, bewildered. “How much is that in Ghana cedis?!”

GH₵ 3.5 billion.

“I am shocked!”

Okine, popularly known as Yaa Buor, sells bottled and sachet water at the Okponglo Junction.

She has been doing business here since 2009, when the new Tetteh Quarshie-Okponglo stretch – one of the busiest in Accra – was completed.

Due to her longevity – “I was the first to start selling water here!” she says proudly – she is known as the ‘mother’ of the hawkers. Doris is a mother of six in her forties and makes a living solely from the water business.

Just overlooking the Okponglo Junction is the University of Ghana Stadium, also known as the Legon Stadium – where the African Games’ opening and closing ceremonies were held.

The government spent $34 million to get the stadium ready for the Games, as part of a $195 million outlay on infrastructure.

Doris says she is surprised the Ghana government, “which always complains of a lack of money”, was able to spend that much on the Games.

“Are you serious?” she questions. “Ghana has such money and we are suffering like that?”

The Legon Stadium hosted the athletics competition – the flagship event of the Games – and so the place bustled with activity.

Yet hawkers around Okponglo like Doris were denied access to the stadium to sell because organizers contracted other vendors to do so.

“This is what we do to survive, and we’ve been here, just close to the stadium, for a long time,” she says.

“I think it was unfair. The security men know us and so they could have taken money from us to allow us to sell and we would have paid to do so. It was only on the last day of the Games that the gates were opened for us. That day was great for me. I made 250 cedis!”

Doris believes there was a lot the government could have spent the African Games money on to improve the standard of living for her kind.

“This is a life and death zone,” she says. “I’ve seen many hawkers die and others become incapacitated from accidents on this stretch. We basically risk our lives every day to serve people. There is a lot our government could do for us [with all the money they are able to spend].”

So, given Ghana’s poor economic condition – and with other sectors such as health and education in critical states, begging for investment – was such a hefty investment on the Games justified?

Should the country have walked away from hosting like Zambia and Equatorial Guinea did?

Dr. Latif Alhassan, a professor of development finance at the University of Cape Town, tells The Fourth Estate that given Ghana’s issues, “the prudent financial decision would have involved the canning of the event”.

This wouldn’t have been an unusual decision especially if the economic case was not sufficient to justify the expenditure,” Dr. Alhassan says. “Australia withdrew from hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games owing to the lack of economic rationale for the country.” 

According to Sports Minister Mustapha Ussif, there was “no perfect time” for Ghana to host the African Games. “It is even during these difficult times that sport can be used to relieve the stress experienced during Covid,” he said.

‘Misplaced Priority’

Opposition MP Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa led a campaign of criticism against Ghana’s expenditure on the Games, calling it a “misplaced priority”.

“This government has a penchant for big spending on things that are not a priority,” he told the BBC. “We have been declared insolvent, bankrupt and downgraded by all sovereign rating agencies.”

Meanwhile, Ablakwa further sounded an alarm on why the government was spending four times more than immediate-past hosts Morocco spent on the event.

“Morocco spent €46 million in hosting the African Games in 2019,” he posted on X (Twitter). “The Moroccan figure includes expenditure on infrastructure, sports equipment, transport and all operational expenses. Comparatively, bankrupt IMF-bailout Ghana is spending $243 million.”

Mustapha Ussif countered that Morocco, who signed on to host the 2019 Games just eight months to it, were in a different situation. “Morocco spent less to host the 2019 African Games because they had existing infrastructure,” he said.

More questions were raised with the cash splash. Ablakwa claimed the government’s $48 million spent on operational costs on the Games’ close to 20-day run was almost eight times more than what the Parliament of Ghana originally approved.

The government’s defense was that it had to do the heavy lifting for the Games, catering for the needs of close to 13,000 participants that made it to the Games – encompassing athletes, volunteers, technical officers, diplomatic guests and even journalists – according to figures from the Sports Minister.

At a press briefing before the Games, sports minister Ussif detailed the operations the $48 million was going to be spent on.

“These operations include technical meetings with the Technical Committee for the African Games (TCAG), preparation of relevant guidelines, rules, regulations, and manuals, sensitisation efforts, payment for the games management system, accommodation for participants (including athletes, volunteers, and officials), internal transportation, airfare for officials, catering services, security, allowances, accreditation, medical equipment, athlete medals, office rent, logistics, equipment purchase, Anti-Doping services, and members’ allowances,” he said.

“It is unfair to say we spent $48 million in two weeks because whatever we spent did not start from the day the 54 delegations started trooping into the country,” Yeboah explains.

“Way before the Games, with every meeting we had with AU officials, we had to fly them in, cater for their hotel bills and pay them allowances. Ahead of the African Games, all the chef de missions had to come and inspect facilities and give reports – we had to cater for all of that.”

Yet, expenditure line items such as $15 million spent on feeding athletes and officials for just over two weeks came under serious scrutiny and suspicion from critics.

The LOC said their efforts in providing food for African Games actors four times daily – breakfast, lunch, supper and snacks – spanning various African cuisines, and without any reported case of food poisoning, is a feat that should be praised rather than probed.

This is a great achievement,” Dr. Ofosu-Asare, the chairman of the LOC, said at a press conference. “Instead of our brothers and sisters in the media praising us for this, it is only the $15 million [they are focused on].”

The government’s decision to spend $3.6 million on the production and broadcast of the Games also provoked uproar.

“People criticized us: why should Ghana spend so much to telecast the Games? Why didn’t we sell the TV rights? Forgetting that when it comes to marketing, it is about demand and supply,” Yeboah says.

“The higher the quality of your brand, the more likely you are to get a buyer. The African Games brand hasn’t gotten to the level of the Afcon (Africa Cup of Nations), where TV brands rush in and say: give it to us. The African Games is not well-branded. It doesn’t even have a title sponsor. Every TV brand we engaged to telecast the Games came with a charge. We had the option of either paying or saying we were not telecasting – which practically wasn’t possible.”

Critics believe the controversy caused by the costs could have been avoided had the government made some revenue through avenues such as the sale of broadcast rights and tickets.

But the broadcast rights came at a cost rather than as income, while all tickets for the Games were made free to encourage fans to patronize the Games.

Broadcast rights and ticketing are two of the major money-makers for organizers of any Games event. For the Paris 2024 Olympics for instance, a record 9.5 million tickets were sold, with prices ranging from $97 to $2900, while for the official broadcasting rights, American network NBC paid more than $1.2 billion.

Kobena Mensah Woyome, opposition spokesman in parliament on Youth and Sports, said gains similar to that, and potentially from tourism and trade, “could have given us some economic value for the huge expenditure” on the African Games.

Success? At what cost?

Despite the contentious nature of the endeavor, Ghana’s government considered the country’s hosting of the 2023 African Games to be a success.

“One of the highlights of my presidency is the way in which my peers congratulate me wherever I go on the success of the African Games,” said President Nana Akufo-Addo.

But, did Akufo-Addo’s government envisage the expensive expenditure on the Games as against potentially marginal returns?

There is more or less a consensus among economists working in this field that hosting large sporting events is not a good investment,” Christian Nielsen, a senior analyst at the Danish Institute for Sports Studies, tells The Fourth Estate.

Nielsen is an economic expert specializing in mega-sports events. 

“There is an opportunity cost too – you could have used that money for other purposes. In order to finance all the infrastructure, you have to reallocate money from more productive and meaningful sectors of the economy.”

That nonetheless, there is evidence that investing in international multi-sports games can have its benefits for host countries.

The 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, UK, for instance, is reported have contributed £1.2 billion to the UK economy against a budget of £778 million, according to the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

The African Games, however, hasn’t quite been known to have a history of significant financial benefits for its hosts. It has been so because there is a sense that it is more about prestige and promoting Pan-Africanism than being a commercially viable venture.

One thing I want Ghanaians to understand is that no country has declared profit monetary-wise after hosting the African Games – of course there are other benefits,” says Yeboah.

“If you are going to host the African Games, you have to have it at the back of your mind that you are not going to declare profit.”

“The structure of the Games needs to change,” says Fentuo Tahiru, editor of Joy Sports at the Multimedia Group. “Currently, it is such that the hosts will always end up spending so much and gaining little.”

Worth it?

Was hosting the Games worth it for Ghana? It’s a polarizing topic.

The government considers its ability to fund the Games a triumph against economic odds, while critics believe it was a tone-deaf undertaking which was not economically viable.

Woyome agrees with the latter.

“Quite apart from the fact that the African Games lacked the clear combined effect of economic viability, its organization lacked clear-cut policies for tourism promotion and trade facilitation,” he said.

Bawa Majeed, the National Sports Authority’s Deputy Director-General, believes the economic viability conversation is misplaced; that the main gain has been missed.

“Hosting the Games was more than worth it,” he tells The Fourth Estate.

“This is because Ghana has been at the forefront of Pan Africanism. The founding father of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, used sports to unite Africa. If you don’t invest in the unity process, how do you play your leadership role? Yes, we have economic challenges, things are difficult – so we should not work to bring Africa together? It reminds me of the saying: Yɛbɛ wu nti yɛnna? [Because we’ll die, we shouldn’t sleep?”]

“Did you see the number of Africans who came to Ghana because of the Games? It is not everything that you do for profit reasons. We cannot be too myopic in our thinking when we think about the investment. We should think beyond that. We shouldn’t think that we spent $250 million, and after the Games we couldn’t make profit, and so we have lost. You don’t think like that when you are developing a country.”

Dr. Latif Alhassan tells The Fourth Estate that every country seeking to host a mega-sports event goes through an Economic Impact Study (EIS).

“The EIS covers the projected revenues – direct and indirect – employment generation and legacy benefits to sports developments in comparison with the cost of hosting the event in order to make a business case,” Dr. Alhassan says. “The EIS would have provided estimated projected revenues from tourism and employment.”

Yeboah says he is unaware of whether Ghana’s LOC indeed had an EIS, but he insists the Games brought a lot of benefits nonetheless, especially economic.

“There were a lot of jobs created during the construction of the facilities – a lot of artisans and a lot of service providers got jobs,” he says.

“But I would say the main benefit was the infrastructure,” Yeboah continues. “There was a huge infrastructural deficit and we needed to bridge that. There was no way any political party would have put up all that infrastructure if it wasn’t for the Games.”

One of the biggest issues critics raised with Ghana’s hosting of the Games was overspending, across $195 million spent on infrastructure and $48 million spent on operational costs. But was that really the case?

“Of course!” Tahiru responds, emphatically. “Don’t get me wrong: If we built entirely new facilities, spending more would have been justified.”

Out of the major centers that were used for the Games, only the Borteyman Sports Complex was a new facility: the Legon Stadium (although hitherto uncompleted), the Legon Rugby Stadium, the Accra Stadium, the Cape Coast Stadium, the Theodosia Okoh Hockey Stadium, the Achimota Cricket Oval and the Bukom Boxing Arena already existed.

The Games Village, too, already existed – the government renovated four hostels at the University of Ghana to serve that purpose.

The government initially planned on building a $200 million, 60,000-capacity ‘Olympic Stadium’ to stage all of the Games at Borteyman, but abandoned that plan due to financial constraints. It then adopted what it called a ‘hybrid approach’ – using both new and existing infrastructure, in order to cut down spending.

“The reason why the government adopted a hybrid approach was to save money,” Tahiru says. “Yet we ended up spending more!”