Director General of the National Sports Authority (NSA), Yaw Ampofo Ankrah, has visited the Azumah Nelson Youth Resource Centre in Kaneshie, Accra, amid growing concerns over the prolonged abandonment of the facility.
The centre, which was launched in March 2018 by then Sports Minister Isaac Asiamah, was touted as a $4 million multi-purpose facility that would transform grassroots sports development in Ghana.
It was designed to feature a 5,000-seater football stadium, volleyball and basketball courts, boxing gyms, athletics tracks, an ICT centre, a counselling hub, and additional amenities.
Later modifications, including the addition of floodlights and other features, further inflated the cost.
Seven years after the first sod was cut, the facility lies in a state of alarming decay. A video taken during Ampofo Ankrah’s visit shows the entire landscape consumed by a thick wall of bush — green, wild, and waist-high — with an incomplete concrete structure looming in the background.
It was same when JoySports visited the site in 2023 during our series on the facilities dubbed, ‘Bush Resource Centres.’
The videos of two years ago and the video of today starkly captures the neglect: a public investment buried beneath vegetation, where snakes and other reptiles now roam freely.
The project was initially scheduled for completion within nine months, but work stalled in October 2020, with progress estimated at 90% by then Sports Minister Mustapha Ussif.
The halt, stakeholders say, stemmed from the government’s failure to disburse due payments to the contractor, leading to an indefinite abandonment.
A JoySports Right to Information request in June 2023 uncovered that approximately GHC 12 million (about $1 million) had already been spent on the site.
The response also claimed the facility was only 50% complete.
The Azumah Nelson Youth Resource Centre was part of a broader initiative by the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the National Youth Authority to provide modern, district-level sporting infrastructure across the country.
About six of the facilities were commissioned about a year ago.
However, the Kaneshie project has instead become a symbol of state neglect— one that has drained public resources and offered no value to the youth it was meant to serve.
It is unclear when construction will resume or what measures will be taken to prevent further deterioration of the site.
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