The rise of basketball through the sport’s most marketable and richest league-the NBA-made it the biggest phenomenon of the early 2000’s and late 1990’s thanks to the rise of great players who broke through the American Sports League barrier. Wildly popular sports leagues like the National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League (NHL) in the Americas had a hard time permeating the social conversation and psyche of any age group outside the Americas in the pre social media boom.
However, the charismatic appeal and ultra talent of Michael Jordan, the late Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Shaquille O’Neal, Tracy McGrady and a bevy of others made basketball the world’s favourite sport and second in popularity behind football. As a child of the world, the changing dynamics reflected in the rise in basketball popularity in Ghana’s youth to the extent of overthrowing football as the number one sport at the Senior High School level in a football mad country.
It is as at this point, a young dynamic Media Personality and fledgling entrepreneur called Yaw Sakyi Afari noted the potential to grow the sport by making it even popular through extending the sport’s reach to locations outside basketball hotbeds. The solution was to create a platform via this company RITE Sports Limited for student athletes to compete in basketball mirroring the INTERCO system specifically made for track and field athletes in Ghana.
That platform was firstly through the CHOICE FM BASKETBALL COMPETITION which he spearheaded while working with the Accra based radio station between 2002 and 2006. After leaving the station later 2006, he partnered beverage giants COCA-COLA COMPANY (their brand Sprite) to create the biggest annual High School game called SPRITE BALL Championship.
By introducing a competition system that had school basketball teams play regional qualifiers to earn spots at the national event, athletes training habits changed from erratic to focus and players were recruited to schools via scholarships to boost respective basketball programs. That aside, resources were devoted to build basketball proper infrastructure, basketball coaches were hired to train teams just as basketball referees and other stakeholders connected to the sport witnessed an exponential rise in demand for their services.
Most importantly it provided an up swell in the talent pool for Ghana and the need to continue fine tuning these eager young talents beyond the High School level led to the creation of the Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges (UPAC) Basketball Championship. Though the tertiary sects in Ghana have respective sports competitions that include basketball students competed in prior to 2011, there wasn’t a common platform to test skills inter sect wise and such competitions like the Ghana University Sports Association (GUSA) Games were held biannually and weren’t enough to provide enough competitions to help athletes grow their skill.
To complete the process along the educational line and introduce basketball to athletes in their formative years, a competition dubbed MILO JUNIOR BALL was created for basketball players at the Junior High School level to build a basketball ecosystem at the amateur level through Ghana’s education system.
Special mention to Peter Kpodugbe and David Addo-Ashong, both former Presidents of the Ghana Basketball Association (GBBA), the Ghana Education Service, leadership of GUSA, GHATUSA and PUSAG and the late Chairman of the Greater Accra Basketball Association who Benjamin Baafi have played significant roles in the development of the game.
To reward the gallant men and women for their sacrifices to grow basketball, RITE Sports Limited created the Ghana Basketball Awards to honour such outstanding personalities. The Awards were organized in 2013, 2015 and 2016 and household names Baniba Dodzie, Abdul Mutaleeb Alhassan and Suleman Abubakar won the Men’s Basketball Player Awards respectively. In the female category, Yayra Kluiboto and Matilda Gordon won the Award.
True to its name, RITE Sports dabbled in different sports disciplines after having a string of successes in basketball and the logical discipline to target was football. Due to the immense popularity of football in Ghana, the UPAC franchise was expanded to include football with an eye to include tennis too. As such, in 2017, the Tertiary Football League was launched with institutions drafted from the Private Universities, Public Universities and Technical Universities/ Polytechnics Sects to compete.
12 teams representing 12 tertiary institutions were selected to compete in the tournament with six in the northern sector and six competing in the southern sector. Games in the Northern Sector were played at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) while the University of Ghana (UG) Legon campus hosted Southern Sector games.
The League recorded some modest success with scouts from a few Ghana Premier League teams spending time at the games every Saturday to recruit talents. The league halted for two years and was due to resume in 2020 but COVID-19 disrupted plans.
Yaw Sakyi has been the secret behind the many projects world boxing legend Azumah Nelson has been engaged in. From the launch of two books, “12 Rounds of Boxing and Life” and “The Professor-The Life of Azumah Nelson” as well as the organization of professional boxing events dubbed Azumah Nelson Fight Night. By teaming up with The Professor, in a Manager’s role, concerted efforts were made to get the reserved World Boxing Hall of Fame inductee’s post boxing career on track.
It is common these days to walk or drive past a billboard of Azumah Nelson advertizing a product from one of the many brands he associates with be it GOIL or De-Luxy Paint; same thing pans on television channels and Africa’s first ever Boxing Hall of Famer could be regularly seen engaging individuals at corporate functions and sharing his life events and lessons at such functions.
It behooves on government to form partnerships with accomplished individual like Azumah Nelson to serve as the beacon for marginalized sports disciplines in Ghana such as boxing to start a renaissance in those areas to create more avenues for individuals to excel. A mentorship, coaching and consulting role for Ghana’s Amateur Boxers prepping for international competitions such as the Olympics and Africa Games by turning the Azumah Nelson Fight Night to a state sponsored amateur boxing league could be a start.
Through football, basketball and boxing, one common denominator runs through and that’s Yaw Sakyi Afari whose dynamic, visionary and contemporary management traits have made a great vessel taking Ghanaian sports to greatness.
As governments over the period speak of bringing back schools sports, one will wonder why governments won’t tap into great minds like him to lead the revitalization of school sports seeing his enviable track record. A case of what Jesus said in Mark 6:4 “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family”.
Yaw Sakyi’s dedication to the growth and development of basketball which has seen the sport record tremendous strides in the past few years earned him both local and international awards. In 2010, he received the SAWG Meritorious Awards as well as the 3G Award in New York, United States of America.
He bagged another one at the 2014 Ghana Fans Awards and was named Man of the Year for Sports at the 2017 EMY Awards.
