African Games: What’s next for the multi-million-dollar Borteyman Sports Complex?

The Borteyman Sports Complex was the main multi-sports venue for the 2023 African Games held in Accra. It is 22km away from the University of Ghana, Legon, where the Games Village was located.

Indeed, former sports minister Mustapha Ussif, revealed that the 100-acre land on which the Borteyman Sports Complex sits was released to the government by the University.

For the Games, the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) procured 332 vehicles, including 55 buses, some of which were to transport athletes and officials from the Games Village to the Complex daily – a 30-minute drive.

The sprawling $145 million complex features a 500-capacity Dome; a green building that has a 1000-capacity center court for Tennis (with four warm-up courts by the side); a blue building that has a 1000-capacity aquatic center (consisting of an Olympic-standard competition pool); a red building that is a 1000-capacity multi-sports hall; a six-lane warm up track and a FIFA-standard pitch.

Two years before the games, an editorial in the Daily Graphic said the complex was going to be the “biggest improvement in the country’s sporting infrastructure” since hosting the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).

That Afcon tournament 17 years ago saw the renovation of the Accra and Kumasi stadiums, and the construction of the Essipong and Tamale stadiums.

Today, like those stadiums – on which the government then spent $100 million – the state-of-the-art Borteyman facility has a potential legacy problem too: a pressing “what’s next?” question, in terms of maintenance and usage.

The government, upon starting the construction of the facility in September 2021, said the complex would be converted to a university of sports development after the Accra 2023 Games. “The investment we have done is beyond the Games,” argued Mustapha Ussif in media interviews.

Yet, a year after the Games, there seems to have been no tangible action regarding the establishment of a university.

Setting up a sports university

In an interview in 2024, Bawa Majeed, the then deputy Director-General of the National Sports Authority (NSA), who was also the facility manager for the complex, told The Fourth Estate that the erstwhile New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was committed to setting up the university.

Unfortunately, the NPP lost power weeks after the interview.

It remains to be seen whether the current National Democratic Congress (NDC) government – whose criticisms of the former government’s spending on the Games are well-documented – will stay with the university plan.

Until then, the fate of the complex hangs in the balance, especially as it is home to what Ghanaians call “lesser-known sports” – sports like swimming, tennis, basketball, handball, volleyball, weightlifting, judo and others. These disciplines, as the tag suggests, do not enjoy significant interest and following compared to football and boxing, Ghana’s dominant sports.

Bawa Majeed told The Fourth Estate that the NSA does not allow Ghana’s “lesser-known sports” federations to use the complex as a training ground, but only for major competitions, which are unfortunately few and far between.

When The Fourth Estate visited the complex in November 2024, the caretaker at the facility, who preferred not to be named, said the place was not in regular use, with only a few competitions taking place there since the Games.

Another individual who had come to pack equipment there spoke to us anonymously. He said the tennis court had been recently used for a political program. “This is unacceptable,” he said. “This is a sports arena!”

Fentuo Tahiru, sports editor at the Multimedia Group Ltd, is concerned about the delay in setting up the university, as well as the relative lack of action at the facility.

“In the meantime, the management of the facility is now in the hands of the NSA, whose reputation for the management of national sporting facilities, as you may well know, is appalling,” he complains.

“I do not trust that the NSA has a plan on how to maintain, manage and utilize the complex as a tool for developing our sports. I fear for what will become of those facilities if the university does not come as soon as possible.”

Indeed, although the decision to convert it into a university was made before its construction, the Borteyman Sports Complex was not built with educational facilities that could enable it transition into a university.

While there is an administration block that was built for the purpose of the games, there are no lecture halls, student and faculty accommodation facilities, libraries among others.

Dan Kwaku Yeboah, spokesperson for the Accra 2023 LOC, tells The Fourth Estate he believes a brand-new Games Village should have been built at Borteyman, which would have been converted to student accommodation for the university afterwards.

“In all honesty I’ve sat on my network to criticize that decision (to renovate the hostels at the University of Ghana as Games Village),” he says.

“If I were the minister, I would have done things differently. But I have no power. If we had built a Games Village at Borteyman, we would have given the proposed university accommodation facilities and by now the university would have been enrolling students.”

Majeed had a different opinion.

“You don’t necessarily have to have lecture halls or hostel facilities at Borteyman to operate the university,” he said.

“There are facilities in town we could use in starting it. The administrative block, for me, is enough for the university to take off. This is because you can rent halls and organize lectures. There are universities in the US or UK who have lecture halls in Ghana and these are accredited institutions. I do not think Borteyman needs the full complement of lecture halls and hostel facilities for a university to take off.”

Tahiru disagrees.

“For $145 million, the complex should have come ready-made with these facilities to kick-start the university, even if on a small scale,” he says.

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t claim to be a know-it-all. I’m not a quantity surveyor. But I have travelled. I have seen facilities. I have seen what money of similar value or less has done.

“Right now, how much more do you think we’ll have to go back and spend to bring this university to life? Maybe another $145 million? It makes no sense!”

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