By Professor Nnamdi Madichie, Professor of Sports Business Management, ASE Athletics
On September 2, 2026, President John Dramani Mahama dissolved the Governing Board of Ghana’s National Sports Authority (NSA) with immediate effect. Consider the stats: 15 members. Less than 9 months in office. All gone.
On paper, it looks like routine housekeeping — a new government clearing the boards of state institutions. The decision forms part of a broader directive by the President to dissolve the boards of nine state institutions across key sectors, including sports, petroleum, banking, mining and infrastructure.
The other affected institutions are Prestea Sankofa Gold Limited, Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST), Volta Aluminium Company Limited (VALCO), Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited (CBG), Ghana Post Company Limited, the Road Maintenance Trust Fund, TDC Ghana Limited, and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC). This is arguably a standard presidential directive. But in football, nothing is ever just routine — especially not in Africa.
The Board That Barely Started
The Dr. Fred Awaah-led board was sworn in on December 15, 2025 by Sports Minister Kofi Adams, with a four-year mandate to 2029. Its brief was clear: provide oversight for the National Sports Authority, drive reforms, and reposition sports as an economic sector, not just a recreational activity. In eight months, it had started pushing new ideas — mobile sporting infrastructure, investment models, and a Resource Mobilisation Committee to reduce dependence on government subvention.
Then the letter came from Jubilee House. All boards dissolved. Management to hold the fort. No major policy or financial decisions without ministerial approval. This is where sports administration in Africa gets complicated.
The Eternal Problem: Who Runs Football?
Ghana runs a two-tier system, like many African countries.
The government side is the National Sports Authority (NSA) under the Ministry of Sports and Recreation. The NSA owns and manages public facilities — Accra Sports Stadium, Baba Yara, Essipong, Tamale Stadium — and controls infrastructure, funding, and state policy.
The association side is the Ghana Football Association (GFA), an independent, private body affiliated to CAF and FIFA. It runs competitions, national teams, referees and coaching. FIFA statutes are brutally clear: Article 19 prohibits government interference in football administration. If a government interferes in the running of its FA, FIFA can suspend the country. Ghana knows this pain — in 2018, after the Number 12 exposé, the government attempted to dissolve the GFA, but FIFA threatened a ban and a Normalization Committee had to be formed.
So why is the dissolution of the NSA board raising governance questions again? Because in Africa, the line between the NSA and the FA is never that clear-cut — and that grey zone is exactly where the trouble starts.
The Interference Grey Zone
FIFA doesn’t care if you sack your NSA board — that’s a government agency, and you’re free to dissolve it. The problem is what happens next. There are three implications every sports manager in Africa should watch.
The first is infrastructure blackmail as interference. When the NSA board is gone, stadium management falls to interim managers with no board oversight and no power to take major decisions. For the past year, Ghana’s stadiums have been a continental embarrassment — Accra Sports Stadium leaking, Baba Yara banned by CAF, the Black Stars forced to play “home” games in Morocco and Nigeria. CAF inspectors don’t care who dissolved what board; they just want working floodlights, standard drainage, VAR rooms, and media tribunes. If interim managers can’t approve contracts to fix these because they need ministerial clearance, clubs and national teams suffer. And when the GFA can’t host home games because NSA facilities aren’t ready, isn’t that indirect interference with football development?
The second is the funding trap. The Awaah board was trying to reduce the NSA’s reliance on government — modern sports management 101: diversify revenue through sponsorship, PPPs, and facility commercialization. But in Ghana, as in Nigeria, Kenya and Cameroon, the Sports Ministry still funds 80% of NSA operations. Dissolve a board pushing for financial autonomy and replace it with interim managers who can’t sign deals without approval, and you reinforce the old model of state dependency. African football administration dies slowly in this trap — federations become departments of ministries, waiting for budget releases, unable to plan long-term.
Third, and finally, is the precedent problem. President Mahama’s directive is legal under Ghana’s Sports Act 2016 (Act 934). But timing is everything: the Black Stars face The Gambia on September 27 in the AFCON 2027 qualifiers. Two things are worth noting here — the CHAN (African Nations Championship) team is already in camp, and the Ghana Premier League is about to start. Both need NSA facilities and approvals. If every new government in Africa dissolves sports boards within nine months, how do you build institutional memory?
These trends — visible in West Africa, notably Ghana and Nigeria — don’t reflect a continent-wide pattern. Eastern Africa (notably Rwanda) and North Africa (particularly Morocco) tell a different story. Rwanda keeps its sports boards for a full cycle. Morocco has kept its infrastructure agency in place for seven years to deliver AFCON 2025 and the 2030 World Cup. This raises the core governance crisis in African sports: short-term political cycles versus long-term sports development.
What Good Governance Would Look Like
This isn’t just a Ghana problem. From Kenya’s Sports Registrar battles, to Nigeria’s NSC/NFF tensions, to Zimbabwe’s FIFA ban in 2022 for government interference, the continent keeps repeating the same script. An 800-word blog can’t fix it, but sports management in Africa needs three non-negotiables:
- Depoliticize facility management. The NSA shouldn’t be treated like BOST or GNPC. Its board should have security of tenure tied to performance indicators — stadium occupancy, CAF approvals, revenue generated — not election cycles.
- Clarify roles. Publish a clear MOU between the Ministry, the NSA, and the GFA. Who maintains pitches? Who approves commercial use of stadiums? Who bears the cost of CAF non-compliance? Without this, the blame games will continue.
- Build an independent sports infrastructure fund — like Morocco’s SONARGES model, managed by professionals rather than ministries, with ring-fenced revenue from gate receipts and naming rights to maintain facilities.
The Big Picture
The dissolution itself won’t trigger a FIFA ban. It’s lawful, and within presidential prerogative — the Presidency has even said boards will be reconstituted “in due course.” But the manner and frequency of it matter.
African football is entering an era of joint hosting — Kenya-Tanzania-Uganda for AFCON 2027, Morocco-Portugal-Spain for the 2030 World Cup, and now the CAF-approved AES joint bid by Mali-Burkina-Niger for AFCON 2032. Joint hosting demands stable, professional, technocratic sports authorities capable of negotiating across borders over five-year horizons. You can’t deliver a six-nation World Cup or a three-nation AFCON if your sports authority board changes every nine months.
President Mahama has pressed reset — and he won’t be the outlier, given the recent example of President Trump’s involvement in the just-concluded FIFA 2026 World Cup, which has put President Infantino in hot water both at home and abroad. That’s his prerogative. The real test is what comes next: will the next NSA board be chosen for competence in sports economics, facility management, and commercial partnerships — or for political loyalty?
Ultimately, Ghanaian fans don’t really care who chairs the NSA. They just want the floodlights at Baba Yara to switch on and work. For now, that’s the only governance metric that matters.
The dissolved NSA Board included 15 members, previously chaired by Dr. Awaah, with representatives from the National Sports Authority, the National Sports College, the Ministries of Sports and Recreation, Finance and Education, and the Security Services Sports Association.
