Our Correspondent
The curtains may have fallen on the 24th edition of the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA) Senior Athletics Championships in Ghana, but the echoes from Accra continue to reverberate across the continent.
Beyond the medals, records and national pride lies a pressing conversation about the future of African athletics — one that demands urgent action from governments, corporate institutions and the CAA itself.
For all its flashes of brilliance, the championship also exposed a painful contradiction: Africa continues to produce some of the greatest athletes in the world, yet struggles to assemble those same stars on its biggest continental stage.
President of the Ghana Athletics Association, Bawah Fuseini, did not shy away from confronting that reality. Reflecting on the tournament, he revealed how Ghana fought to secure sponsorship while grappling with the absence of many elite African athletes.
“We used some of our domestic athletes to secure sponsorship from Ghana and also relied on some African athletes to attract continental sponsorship,” Fuseini said. “Unfortunately, we were not able to attract enough top African athletes to the championship. That is why we secured local sponsors but could not attract international support. If we had been able to incentivise top African athletes to participate, we could have leveraged their presence to attract international sponsorship.”
His remarks strike at the heart of the challenge confronting athletics on the continent. Sponsorship follows visibility, and visibility follows star power. Without Africa’s elite athletes competing consistently at the African Championships, the event risks losing commercial relevance in an increasingly competitive global sports market.
Fuseini pointed to football as the blueprint athletics must study.
“When there is the Africa Cup of Nations, almost every country comes with its best footballers,” he said. “That is why CAF always gets sponsorship for the Nations Cup. If we are unable to do the same in athletics, we will struggle to attract sponsorship.”
The comparison is difficult to ignore. The Africa Cup of Nations has become one of the continent’s most powerful sporting products because African nations treat it with prestige and priority. The continent’s biggest football stars answer the call, broadcasters invest heavily, sponsors compete for visibility and governments rally behind the tournament.
Athletics, despite Africa’s dominance on the global stage, has yet to create that same continental identity around its flagship championship.
“Africa has the best athletes in the world, yet our best athletes do not compete in our topmost event,” Fuseini lamented. “That is something the CAA must address.”
That statement should serve as a wake-up call for the continental athletics body.
The future of the African Championships cannot continue to depend solely on the goodwill and sacrifice of host nations. What is urgently needed is a strong and enforceable policy framework from the CAA — one that protects the integrity and prestige of its elite competition.
Such a framework should prioritise mandatory elite participation where possible, better alignment with global athletics calendars, appearance incentives for top athletes, stronger commercial packaging and long-term sponsorship structures. Without these reforms, the championships may continue to struggle for relevance despite Africa’s unmatched athletic talent pool.
Fuseini acknowledged there are deeper structural challenges beyond athlete participation.
“To ensure top African athletes compete at the championships, there are other issues we must address — organisation, feeding and technical arrangements,” he said. “If we do not attract the best athletes and secure the funding needed to fix these problems, the challenges will continue.”
It becomes a vicious cycle: weak funding leads to organisational limitations, while organisational limitations make it harder to attract elite athletes and premium sponsors.
And at the centre of it all remains Africa’s oldest sporting obstacle — funding.
“You know the African problem is funding,” Fuseini said. “If a government tells you that it can only support the competition within a particular period, then you must work within that reality. In Ghana, we had a peculiar situation which forced us to move the competition from July to May.”
The decision to move the championships to May became controversial in some quarters, especially because many African student-athletes based in the United States were unavailable. Yet Ghana insisted the move was necessary to secure government backing and avoid clashes with major international sporting events.
“Football in Ghana is a completely different ball game,” he explained. “When there is a World Cup, nothing else gets attention. If we scheduled the competition during that period, nobody would focus on it. So, to ensure Africa did not miss this championship, we moved it to May, knowing that some athletes based in the US would not be able to participate.”
Even Ghana itself suffered competitively from the absence of key athletes abroad.
“We also have some of our top athletes in the US college system who could not come,” Fuseini said. “But should the whole of Africa wait until August because Ghana wants its best athletes? The programme is for Africa, not Ghana. That is why we held it in May — to secure government and Sports Ministry support.”
His explanation underscores the complexity of hosting continental events in Africa, where organisers must navigate government financing cycles, international calendars and logistical realities with limited resources.
Fuseini further revealed that the FIFA World Cup, Commonwealth Games, World Junior Championships and Youth Olympic Games all contributed to scheduling complications.
“We considered all these factors before deciding either to host it before the World Cup or postpone it to next year,” he said. “Postponement was not an option, so we held it in May. Despite the challenges, we delivered successfully.”
And perhaps that is the strongest takeaway from Accra: Africa continues to stage world-class competitions through resilience, sacrifice and determination, often without the financial muscle available elsewhere.
But resilience alone cannot sustain elite sport forever.
For African athletics to truly evolve, the continent itself must stand firmly behind its championship. Governments must begin to see sports as economic and diplomatic investments rather than ceremonial activities. Corporate Africa must recognise the commercial power of athletics. Most importantly, the CAA must establish policies that elevate the African Championships into a must-attend event for every elite African athlete.
Fuseini’s closing remarks carried both frustration and hope.
“We will continue to advocate for more funding because all these issues come back to funding,” he said.
“If we had enough resources, we would have purchased tickets directly instead of relying on third parties. It was financial constraints that forced us into those arrangements.”
Looking ahead, however, he remains optimistic.
“Now that we have a sports fund in Ghana, I am hopeful things will improve next year in terms of sports funding.”
The message from Accra is loud and clear. Africa does not lack talent. Africa does not lack passion. What African athletics needs now is structure, commitment and a continental resolve to protect and elevate its own championship.
