Gains Versus Drains: Football Academies and the Export of Highly Skilled Football Labor Paul Darby

Reader in Sociology of Sport University of Ulster

Over the last two decades, there has been a debate of increasingly acrimonious proportions on the consequences of what has come to be labeled as an “exodus” of Africa’s finest football talent to Europe. This debate, played out in the game’s corridors of power, in media circles, amongst academics, between politicians, and in both European and African courts, has often mirrored polemicizing around highly skilled African migration more generally. The emigration of the highly skilled from the Global South and its impact on development in source countries has, for many decades, vexed politicians, economists, policy makers, and academics alike. In the second half of the twentieth century, heavyweight intellectual paradigms rooted in neoclassical and neo-Marxist perspectives vied for primacy in the migration research and policy communities. Clearly demarcated battle lines were drawn and polemical debates ensued. Migration was painted as a zero-sum game involving either gains or drains, winners or losers, a cause for optimism or pessimism. Optimists argued that capital could be captured and gains accrued by donor nations through remittances, the (assumed) return of migrants and associated brain circulation, rising wages, and transnationally minded diasporas, all of which could function as potential engines and agents of development. Pessimists depicted skilled migration as an extractive process characterized by the hemorrhaging of valuable resources abroad, underdevelopment, a deepening of poverty and global inequality, and damaging sociocultural impacts in sending societies.1 Paul Darby is Reader in Sociology of Sport at the University of Ulster. His most recent book is Gaelic Games, Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora in the United States (University College Dublin Press, 2009). He is a member of the editorial board of Soccer and Society. Copyright © 2012 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs

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Given sub-Saharan Africa’s status as a primary exporter of skilled and tertiary-educated labor, it is hardly surprising that this region features prominently in debates around the costs and benefits of out-migration.2 Sustained African skilled migration began during the 1960s with the creation and expansion of access to education in newly independent nation-states. During the 1970s, the horizons of the newly educated shifted beyond national borders as a consequence of a range of social, economic, and political factors. By the 1980s, the promise of higher wages and an escape from political instability and conflict drew workers from around the continent to Europe, North America, and the oil-rich nations of the Middle East. Since then, out-migration rates amongst tertiaryeducated Africans to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, particularly those in the European Union, have increased dramatically.3 While the impact of this process on the continent was, and still is, often explained via the classical opposition between migration optimists and pessimists, a whole raft of microlevel studies has produced a wealth of empirical evidence that reveals the impact of out-migration on developing countries, including those in Africa, to be much more complex and heterogeneous than either of these broad macrolevel positions suggest.4 The debate on the emigration of highly skilled football labor to Europe reveals similar fault lines in the public, policy, and academic discourse on African migration more generally. On one side are optimists who argue that the migration of African footballers provides the sort of exposure to elite leagues and salaries that not only contributes to the development of football, but also allows individuals to escape poverty and potentially facilitate development at home. Others vehemently disagree, painting the loss of Africa’s football resources to Europe as evidence of uneven global development and neocolonialism. This latter view was perhaps expressed most caustically by Sepp Blatter, the president of the world governing body for football, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). In an interview with the Financial Times in 2003, he described those European clubs involved in the recruitment of African labor as “neo-colonialists” who “engage in social and economic rape by robbing the developing world of its best players.”5 Football academies, defined in the broadest terms as facilities or coaching programs designed to produce football talent predominantly for export, have received particular criticism. As demand for highly skilled but cheap football labor in Europe accelerated during the last decade and a half, so too has the presence of these facilities around the continent—particularly in West Africa. Academies have been viewed in some quarters as part of an unseemly scramble for young, malleable athletes and have been

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Gains Versus Drains variously described by senior African football administrators and journalists as “farms,” “a terrible thing,” and as sites where young players are “groomed” for export, leaving domestic leagues “bereft of talent.”6 Analyses of the causes, consequences, and impact of African player migration to Europe and the place of football academies in the trade have also begun to feature in the growing academic literature on sports labor migration. Although the key studies have adopted a more measured position than some of the media and policy discourse, they are generally underpinned by a pessimism that depicts the impact of the trade as problematic for African football, communities, and countries.7 This article reconsiders this position in relation to Ghana.8 More specifically, it examines the extent to which football academies and the broader football industry that has emerged around the export of Ghanaian footballers can be understood exclusively via the optimist or pessimist position or whether they elicit much more heterogeneous impacts. In order to begin to address these questions, the article briefly outlines the development and key features of Ghanaian football labor migration. GHANAIAN FOOTBALL LABOR IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE While there has been a long-standing tradition of outward flows of football migrants from Africa to Europe that stretches back to the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not until the early 1990s that sustained football labor migration from Ghana began. Enticed by the country’s success at FIFA’s Under-17 World Youth Championships in the 1990s, scouts, agents, and intermediaries acting on behalf of European teams flocked to the rich but cheap seam of highly skilled talent.9 The upshot was that by the turn of the new millennium, Ghana had become the third highest exporter of football labor on the continent, accounting for 10 percent of all Africans in the European professional game.10 Ghanaian players have continued to feature prominently in international transfers from Africa. By 2010, there were just over 350 expatriated in football leagues around the world, while each year around 40 leave local clubs on officially sanctioned international transfers.11 The majority of these players secure contracts in Europe; Germany is the primary importer followed by England.12 While some Ghanaians play in lucrative competitions in Italy, France, and Spain, a significant proportion ply their trade outside elite leagues.13 Alongside these Afro-European routes is a much more diffuse and seemingly random movement of Ghanaians to leagues in Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere in Africa. In most cases though, migration to these sorts of destinations are seen as intermediate steps on the way to

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Paul Darby one of Europe’s major leagues. The aspirations of talented young Ghanaian players to play professionally in Europe are shaped by a complex, interweaving mélange of factors. In the minds of young talents, mediated images of top-level European leagues and “star” migrant Ghanaian players with lucrative careers are juxtaposed with the reality that local football offers few opportunities for a professional career. “Professional” football in Ghana has been in existence since 1993, but monthly average player salaries remain low and in most cases compare unfavorably with, for example, the salary of a university graduate working in the Ghanaian civil service. Beyond economics, the governance It is clear that there exists amongst of Ghanaian football can young talented players a strong sense prove unstable, creating that their futures lie outside the country. further difficulties for local players. For example, the start of the second half of the 2010–2011 Premier League season was delayed when clubs suspended their activities in protest over a raid on the offices of the Ghanaian Football Association (GFA) by Ghana’s serious fraud unit, the Economic and Organized Crime Office, as part of an investigation into alleged financial improprieties.14 These sorts of events, combined with poor salaries 268 and working conditions, as well as broader levels of poverty in the country, do little to encourage young Ghanaian footballers to envisage a future in the local game. Instead, they provide a compelling logic to “go outside” and effectively help produce a committed and flexible workforce that hankers after employment opportunities in Europe. While the number of players who actually migrate from Ghana to Europe makes it difficult to quantify the process as indicative of a culture of migration in Ghanaian football, it is clear that there exists amongst young talented players a strong sense that their futures lie outside the country. This state of affairs is both culturally and economically problematic. First, it may make them unwilling to build or disinterested in building a future locally. Second, it can and has left players, particularly minors, susceptible to financial and other forms of exploitation by unscrupulous clubs, agents, and intermediaries. This latter issue has been well documented across West Africa, and leading organizations such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have called for increased policing and regulation.15 The extent of the issue in Ghana was revealed in 1999 when a judicial inquiry into 150 overseas transfers in the 1990s uncovered clear examples of player exploitation and financial corruption involving senior GFA officials, local club chairmen, and a number of European agents.16

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Gains Versus Drains The Gbadegbe inquiry report marked something of a watershed in the GFA’s approach to player transfers. Now, such trades are more tightly regulated. Partially in response to the compelling evidence of the exploitation of minors, particularly from Africa, FIFA introduced a set of international transfer regulations in 2001 that prohibited clubs from signing non-European Union players under the age of 18 to professional contracts. Along with the introduction in 2008 of an electronic system for registering international transfers and increasing oversight of contracts exercised by the GFA in recent years, the new transfer provisions have helped to curb, although not completely eradicate, some of the more exploitative and nefarious aspects of the trade, especially the maltreatment of minors. This regulatory tightening, however, has not slowed the pace of football labor migration from Africa to Europe. Indeed, since the introduction of FIFA’s transfer regulations, European employers have recruited greater numbers of highly skilled African players. This has certainly been the case in Ghana. Central to this trend has been the emergence of a system of football academies across the country. Before assessing how this system impacts Ghanaian football and society, it is necessary to comment on the development and diversity of football academies that operate in Ghana. PRODUCING HIGHLY SKILLED FOOTBALL MIGRANTS: AN EMERGING ACADEMY SYSTEM In a similar fashion to the production of highly skilled labor, the intellectual, physical, and technical skills required of those who aspire to a career in professional football are acquired through overlapping phases of schooling, training, and experiential learning. The long-standing cultural pervasiveness and popularity of football in Ghana is such that young, raw athletic ability is plentiful. Exposure to organized football at school and through a nationwide network of youth clubs and leagues aids in the refinement of young talent. For those who possess the potential, entry into the academy system beckons. This system has emerged over the last 10–15 years, partially in response to the growth in the export of football labor from the country. It is an extremely fragmented sector. Some segments are well resourced and managed whereas others are essentially micro-enterprises operating on a shoestring budget without the transnational connections that might facilitate direct migration to Europe. Depending on which sector young players are recruited into, they gain access to the technical knowledge, facilities, training regimes, and transnational networks that may ultimately lead to a professional career in Europe.

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As is the case elsewhere in Africa, there is considerable diversity in the types of academies that exist in Ghana. Some are entirely Ghanaian-operated. For example, most of the prominent local clubs have established academies that seek to recruit and prepare young players, typically between the ages of 12 and 18, for a career in the domestic game or, if sufficiently talented, for transfer overseas. Some of these clubs have been successful in developing the sorts of networks with European clubs and agents that allow them to transfer players on a regular basis. Liberty Professionals, a club established in 1996 with the express purpose of developing young talent for the overseas market, has been particularly successful in this regard, producing some of Ghana’s most highly skilled migrant players. A range of other local community entrepreneurs has also come to view academies as potentially lucrative business ventures. This segment of the system is far from uniform. Some academies are improvised and very modestly proportioned projects that only merit the name academy in the sense that they provide a loosely structured football education, albeit often from poorly qualified coaches. They are typically not registered with the GFA or local government and operate in the informal, or what Ferguson referred to as the “shadow” economy.17 Others have bigger ambitions, setting up nationwide recruitment networks and building small rudimentary facilities or “clubhouses” where young boys are housed, fed, and clothed. It is difficult to determine how many of these academies exist in Ghana, although it has been suggested that there are as many as 500 in the capital Accra alone.18 The Unistar Academy is the most prominent locally owned and operated academy in the country. Based in Offankor in Cape Coast, it was established by a group of Ghanaian businessmen led by Ernest Kuffour, a specialist in financial markets, who invested around $1 million in the construction of residential accommodations, administrative buildings, a school, and playing facilities. The Academy is unashamedly oriented toward developing the sorts of relationships with European clubs and agents that will allow them to maximize investment through the sale of players.19 The other key segment of the emerging academy system has a distinctly European flavor. A number of European clubs have been active on the ground in Ghana, establishing transnational arrangements that provide privileged access to talented players and the opportunity to mold young players before they can be legally transferred to Europe. For example, in 1999, the Dutch club Ajax Amsterdam purchased a 51-percent stake in the then-Ghanaian Premier League club Obuasi Goldfields, while in the mid-2000s the Danish club Midtjylland brokered a strategic relationship with local club FC Maamobi United. While

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Gains Versus Drains both of these ventures were relatively short-lived, other European teams have established a more lasting presence in the country’s football landscape.20 In 1999, Rotterdam-based Feyenoord instituted a residential academy in Gomoa Fetteh on the Cape Coast while the Austrian club, Red Bull Salzburg, invested around 6 million euros in a state-of-the-art facility in Sogakope in the Volta Region. More recently, in 2011 FC Utrecht from Holland became the first European team to establish a presence in the northern region, partnering with Abdulai Alhassan, a former Ghanaian migrant player, to  establish an academy in Tamale. While it is staffed primarily but not exclusively by Europeans, Right to Dream, one of the most prominent and well-developed academies in the country, cannot be described as an exclusively European or Ghanaian operation. Established in 1999, it has developed from a grassroots coaching program into an elite football academy, producing a number of players for overseas export. In recent years, this academy, discussed in more detail shortly, has broadened its remit, functioning as a “sport-for-development” organization that seeks to have a broader “developmental” impact on Ghanaian society. THE LOCAL “IMPACTS” OF HIGHLY SKILLED FOOTBALL MIGRATION FROM GHANA What then are the local impacts of this academy system and the export of highly skilled Ghanaian football labor to Europe? Who do these facilities and processes benefit most and how do they impact Ghanaian football and society more generally? As noted earlier, much of the media, policy, and academic discourse on the impact of African player migration has been characterized by largely pessimistic perspectives. Informed by critical approaches to economic globalization, my own work has argued that the relationship between African and European actors in the trade is uneven and inequitable.21 I have suggested, for example, that African football finds itself in a position of dependent trading; that the talent exodus has deskilled and impoverished the domestic African game; that European clubs have been able to dictate the terms upon which the transfer of players is conducted; and that the trade is ultimately an extractive process. While I would maintain that this position captures the broad structural dynamics of the trade, recent developments in the regulation of international transfers and the emergence of what might be considered more ethical approaches to talent extraction raise questions about the extent to which the pessimistic position fully encapsulates the impact of football academies in local, African contexts. The remainder of this paper explores the extent to which these impacts might be more heterogeneous than has previously been suggested.

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There are aspects of the academy system described above that replicate the uneven power dynamics that we see play out in the broader economic relationship between the Global South and its northern counterpart. For example, the European academies in Ghana are essentially vertically integrated, transnational structures in which all elements of production, distribution, and consumption are closely controlled by the parent organization. These structures are specifically set up to extract skilled labor, and all activities are focused on generating a return on investment. However, even where European interests are accorded primacy, it is important to note that value can be captured in the local context. From a sporting perspective, the GFA welcomes European investment in football academies, arguing that they contribute to the production of players for domestic and international teams.22 In terms of their broader impact on Ghanaian society, the European academies emphasize that children from impoverished backgrounds who happen to be talented footballers are being given the opportunity of a free education, and they point to academies’ involvement in a range of social programs as evidence of more altruistic intent.23 All of this suggests that foreign academies, at the least, aspire to make a more heterogeneous developmental impact. While this is broadly welcomed in the communities in which they are based, the fact remains that their primary self-stated objective is the mining and refinement of football talent for export. This tension between extraction and developmental impacts also permeates the operations of local academies such as the one operated by Liberty Professionals. This is clearly a business venture operated by enterprising local businessmen and investors who have identified an opportunity to position themselves as key conduits in the increasingly global marketplace for Ghanaian football talent. Their ability to extract a return on the sale of players facilitates inward investment and contributes to the local economy. It also benefits those players who are showcased through these academies and are able to secure professional contracts in the European game. Remittances from migrant professionals also ensure that their families benefit, along with the broader communities within which these families are rooted. Beyond owners and players, some academies also provide employment opportunities for local coaches, teachers, construction workers, cleaners, cooks, and administrative staff. They also support the activities of a range of local businesses and micro-enterprises. This further suggests that segments of the academy system have the potential to operate in a manner that sees benefits accruing to local communities and interests in Ghana. The potential of the trade in football labor in this regard is perhaps most apparent in the Right to Dream Academy.

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Gains Versus Drains While Right to Dream is a not-for-profit charitable venture, it is also a football academy in the conventional sense. Since its inception in 1999, it has produced eight professional players who are contracted with clubs in England, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. In 2010, Right to Dream entered into a long-term collaboration with an English Premier League club to facilitate financial investment, exchanges of coaches, training placements for players, and, for the most talented, an opportunity to sign professionally with the club. However, the philosophy and ethos of the academy are much broader than football, a fact best encapsulated in its vision “to offer talented, underprivileged children the opportunity to reach their true potential in life and claim a better future for Africa.”24 While academy recruits are given every opportunity to develop into professional players, Right to Dream places as much emphasis on the provision of a first-class education. This is facilitated through an on-site school which combines Ghanaian and international curricula, a deeply embedded system of pastoral care, and a number of partnerships with elite boarding schools in the United States and Hartpury College in England. Of the 35 students who have graduated from Right to Dream to date, around three-quarters have availed themselves of these educational partnerships. This has led some to achieve full scholarships at prestigious U.S. universities such as Yale and Columbia. Beyond 273 football and education, the academy has also developed a vocational stream for graduates with an interest in pursuing a career in football coaching, performance analysis, or physiotherapy. Unpacking Right to Dream’s vision statement provides further insight into the organization’s philosophy. It is self-evident that the academy provides boys from deeply impoverished backgrounds with meaning- The academy’s emphasis on furthering ful educational and vocational development is additional evidence opportunities, and, for some, of a shifting focus from identifying, the promise of a professional football career. What is less clear producing, and exporting football talent is how the academy “might help toward using sports for development. claim a better future for Africa.” The academy’s aspiration is that graduates will function as agents of development in Ghana. The principle of “giving back” is central in its agent-centered approach to development. This notion has operated informally, and past graduates have demonstrated a commitment to the academy and their local communities. In late 2011, the academy formalized its approach by developing a compulsory but non-enforceable contract with all academy recruits around the ways that they will

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contribute after their graduation. This system is built around the principle that each academy student will pay back a set number of “credits” in return for their place at the academy. These credits are oriented around personal achievements in education and football but are also earned for involvement in local community projects and foundations, entrepreneurial activities in African contexts, longterm employment in an African company, and even elected representation in local politics. In order to ensure the sustainability of the development impacts that this contract might achieve, the number of credits that can be paid through direct financial contributions after graduation is limited. The academy’s emphasis on furthering development is additional evidence of a shifting focus from identifying, producing, and exporting football talent toward using sports for development. This shift is evidenced by its ongoing promotion of education, health, and disease prevention, work-building capacity for sport and health, inception of a residential girls football program, and recent designation as a hub for Ghanaian Paralympic sports. The academy has also sought to extend its development-focused agenda beyond Ghana, with staff acting as consultants to the Craig Bellamy Foundation, an academy project in Sierra Leone, which combines elite football training with a broader development focus.25 Within the emerging academy system in Ghana, Right to Dream is unique in two important ways. First, while an aspiration to contribute to development is at best loosely affixed to the activities of other academies operating in the country, it has become much more central to Right to Dream’s objectives. The second way relates to how the Academy sees itself in the broader sport-for-development field. Coalter has argued that support for sport from international development agencies, NGOs, and private philanthropic foundations has been underpinned by an “almost evangelical policy rhetoric” and “mythopoeic” claims around the capacity of sport to have a positive impact on a whole host of social, economic, and cultural issues in the developing world.26 At the same time, Coalter’s work highlights that the sport-for-development movement provides little robust evidence to support its assertions and operates less-than-rigorous monitoring and evaluation of programs and initiatives. Nonetheless, grand claims about the power of sport to create significant societal transformations in the Global South continue to emanate from organizations working in this field. While Right to Dream is confident that in the longer term its graduates will give back to Ghana and their local communities in ways that at least create possibilities for varying degrees of development, the Unistar Academy is much more circumspect and far less inclined to speculate.

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Gains Versus Drains CONCLUSION Right to Dream’s caution on the extent to which their activities will contribute to sustainable and meaningful development in Ghanaian communities is a position that I share. The extent to which the activities of the academy translate into development impacts will be contingent to a large degree on the return— physical, financial, and intellectual—of Right to Dream graduates to their communities. The “giving back” scheme is likely to help imbue those graduates pursuing football careers, educational opportunities, or other professional interests abroad with a transnational mindset, one that is likely to see capital, skills, knowledge, and ideas flow back to Ghana. What is less clear is whether or not this financial reinvestment and “brain gain” will elicit effective and long-term economic, social, health, and educational benefits for communities across the country. Migration optimists would be inclined to point to precedents involving Ghanaian migrant football players establishing NGOs, charitable foundations, and schools, and reinvesting foreign earned capital in a productive manner.27 Pessimists, on the other hand, might highlight the tendency for highly skilled, tertiary-educated migrants to act less transnationally through time as well as the often unproductive, consumer-oriented use of financial capital accrued as a consequence of migration. At the very least, the model at Right to Dream reveals the potential for social, educational, and economic value to be captured from a football academy and utilized in ways that empowers individuals in the developing world to contribute positively to their communities. In the context of the broader trade in football labor between Africa and Europe, a trade that is marked by asymmetrical relations, this is a welcome development. WA NOTES 1. For an overview of discursive shifts in the debate on migration and development, see: Hein de Haas, “Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective,” International Migration Review 44, no. 1 (2010): 227–64. 2. See: Aderanti Adepoju, “Trends in International Migration in and from Africa,” International Migration Prospects and Policies in a Global Market, ed. Douglas S. Massey and J. Edward Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 3. Robert E. B. Lucas, “Migration and Economic Development in Africa: A Review of Evidence,” Journal of African Economies 15, AERC Supplement 2 (2006): 337–95; Frédéric Docquier and Abdeslam Marfouk, “International Migration by Educational Attainment, 1990–2000,” International Migration, Remittances and Brain Drain, ed. Calgar Ozden and Maurice Schiff (New York: World Bank and Palgrave, MacMillan, 2004); E. Ike. Udogu, “African Development and the Immigration of its Intelligentsia: An Overview.” Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration 3 (2004): 1–24. 4. Hein de Haas, Mobility and Human Development, Human Development Research Paper 2009/01 (New York: UNDP, 2009). 5. Matt Bosch, “Soccer’s Greedy Neo-colonialists,” Financial Times, December 17, 2003, 19.

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6. Issa Hayatou, interview, Soccer Africa (October 1999): 16–19; T. Tataw, “Human Traffic: Cameroon,” African Soccer 66 (2001): 13; E. Maradas, “Human Traffic,” African Soccer 66 (2001): 8–9. 7. See, for example: Peter Alegi, African Soccerscapes: How a Continent Changed the World’s Game (London: Hurst & Co, 2010); John Bale, “Three Geographies of African Footballer Migrations Patterns, Problems and Postcoloniality,” Football in Africa: Conflict, Conciliation and Community, ed. Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 229–46; Scarlett Cornelissen and Eirik Solberg, “Sport Mobility and Circuits of Power: The Dynamics of Football Migrations in Africa and the 2010 World Cup,” Politikon 34, no. 3 (2007): 295–314; Paul Darby, “The New Scramble for Africa: African Football Labour Migration to Europe,” European Sports History Review 3 (2000): 217–44; Paul Darby, “Out of Africa: The Exodus of African Football Talent to Europe,” WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labour and Society 10, no. 4 (2007): 443–56; Paul Darby, “African Football Labour Migration to Portugal: Colonial and Neo Colonial Resource,” Soccer and Society 8, no. 4 (2007): 495–509; Paul Darby, “‘Go Outside’: The History, Economics and Geography of Ghanaian Football Labour Migration,” African Historical Review 42, no. 1 (2010): 19–41; Paul Darby, Gerard Akindes, and Matthew Kirwin, “Football Academies and the Migration of African Football Labour to Europe,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 31, no. 2 (2007): 143–61; Raffaele Poli, “Migrations and Trade of African Football Players: Historic, Geographical and Cultural Aspects,” Afrika Spectrum 41, no. 3 (2006): 393–414; Raffaele Poli, “Africans’ Status in the European Football Players’ Labour Market,” Soccer and Society 7, nos. 2–3 (2006): 278–91. 8. The article draws on the findings of four periods of multi-sited ethnographic research in Ghana conducted as part of a study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-000-22-2617) examining the production and distribution of highly skilled Ghanaian football labor and the role of an emerging academy system in these processes. 9. Ghana was crowned World Youth Champion on two occasions in this decade (1991 and 1995) and twice finished runner-up in this biennial competition in the same period. 10. Bale, “Three Geographies.” 11. Isaac Addo (Deputy General Secretary of the Ghanaian Football Association), interview, January 27, 2009. For statistics regarding Ghanaian football players abroad, see: “Alphabetical Index of Ghanaian Players,” Ghana Web, http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/soccer/players.php. 12. The status of Germany in this regard is attributable mainly to the financial rewards of a successful career in the German Bundesliga, the media-fueled profile of German football in Ghana, and the success of high-profile Ghanaian football migrants to the Bundesliga such as Sammuel Kuffour and Tony Yeboah. The status of England as a key destination is reflective of colonial ties, a shared language, broader patterns of transnational migration, and economic opportunity. 13. Poli, “Africans’ Status.” 14. Ghana News Agency, December 11, 2010. 15. In 1999, the UN Commission on Human Rights published a report that concluded by referring to the “danger of effectively creating a modern day ‘slave trade’ in young African footballers.” See: “Belgium’s Football ‘Slave Trade’,” BBC News, March 10, 1999; Marc Broere and Roy van der Drift, Football Africa! (Oxford: Worldview Publishing, 1997); Peter Donnelly and Leanne Petherick, “Workers’ Playtime? Child Labour at the Extremes of the Sporting Spectrum,” Sport in Society 7, no. 3 (2004): 301–21. 16. Report of the Lord Justice Gbadegbe Commission of Inquiry, 1999. 17. James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). 18. Dan McDougall, “The Investigation,” Observer Sport Monthly (January 2008): 50–55. 19. Ernest Kuffour (Chief Executive Officer, Unistar Academy), interview, June 3, 2011. 20. Ajax decided to end its investment following limited returns, and Midtjylland did likewise because it felt that Nigeria offered better, less competitive recruitment opportunities than Ghana. 21. Particularly Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system theory and Andre Gunder Frank’s contribution to the dependency paradigm. See: Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Under-Development in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). 22. Isaac Addo, (GFA Deputy General Secretary), interview, January 27, 2009; Kwesi Nyantacki (GFA

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Gains Versus Drains President), May 28, 2011. 23. For example, the Feyenoord Academy has partnered with UNICEF in a range of programs including a peer education HIV/AIDS awareness campaign, while Red Bull’s corporate social responsibility extends to the provision of a tap that supplies fresh drinking water for neighboring villages. 24. Field notes, Right to Dream Growth Forum meeting, London, May 10, 2011. 25. See: www.craigbellamyfoundation.org. 26. Fred Coalter, “The Politics of Sport-For-Development: Limited Focus Programmes and Broad Gauge Problems?” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45, no. 3 (2010): 295–314; Fred Coalter, “A Wider Social Role for Sport: Who’s Keeping the Score?” (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). 27. The Michael Essien Foundation, John Paintsil’s Peace Kids Project, Stephen Appiah’s StepApp Foundation, and Nii Lamptey’s Glow-Light Junior School are all examples of philanthropy on the part of migrant Ghanaian footballers.

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