Original Story Published by: William McBain, www.africanbusinessmagazine.com
Photo Source: African Business
(Above) Ghana’s Right to Dream.
Aged 12, Burkinabé footballer Ousseni Bouda caught wind of trials taking place in northern Ghana, hosted by the Right to Dream football academy. Secretly wearing a football kit underneath his school uniform, he biked and hitchhiked from the outskirts of the Sahara desert and across Burkina Faso’s border with Ghana, only to discover the trials had finished.
As he sat dejected in the rain, a scout acknowledged Bouda’s passion and arranged a further match on his behalf. His talent shone through, and he became the first boy from Burkina Faso to engage in a football and education programme at the academy in Ghana, before travelling to the US on a scholarship at 16. In America, his footballing and academic skills flourished and he earned an athletic scholarship to Stanford University.
Bouda is now on course to join a club of over 80 Right to Dream graduates who have completed studies at major universities in the US or Europe. He’s also expected to qualify for the next draft of college students from which North America’s Major League Soccer (MLS) teams annually select new players. Taking inspiration from Liberia’s President George Weah, himself a former footballer, Bouda’s future ambition is to lead his country, telling staff he’ll “make sure it’s not one of the poorest in Africa anymore, lifting it out of poverty”.
Unparalleled opportunities
Such dreams are inculcated on the academy’s eight football fields nestled against the banks of the Volta river near Atimpoku, a two-hour drive northeast of Ghana’s capital, Accra. With over 50 staff, students learn robotics, perform in theatrical renditions of plays such as Lord of the Flies, and study in classrooms named after inspirational Africans like Nelson Mandela. Eighteen teachers provide a Cambridge-accredited curriculum with core STEM and humanities subjects. Students sit IGCSE examinations, which open educational pathways to schools in the UK.
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