A football academy uncovers Ghana’s hidden talent

On an outside wall at the Right to Dream Academy is a map of the world, stretching from floor to ceiling.

Spread across it, in Ghana, north Africa, the US and Europe, are pictures of the academy’s students and alumni, many of whom are now playing professional football, or studying for degrees in the US while still training on the side.

Right to Dream was set up in 1999 by a former Manchester United scout, Tom Vernon. It is now considered one of the best football academies in sub-Saharan Africa. In early 2021, it received a major influx of cash when Man Capital, part of Egypt’s Mansour Group, bought a majority stake for €100 million.

The academy is based in a village called Old Akrade, in eastern Ghana – more than two hours drive from capital city Accra.

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Dotted around the school are motivational statements such as “find your purpose”.

“Right to Dream develops strong leaders who are open-minded, confident and ethical, aspiring to claim a better future for Africa,” reads a mission statement.

The academy currently has 109 students – all on full scholarships – and around 60 staff, most of whom are Ghanaian. The students include 16 girls.

For Eddie Mensah, Right to Dream’s managing director, the academy’s goal feels personal.

“I was born and raised here, I lived in the US for about 30 years and then decided to come back,” he says, during a tour of the school.

“Many of us had to leave [Ghana] in order to reach certain levels of education, certain levels of attainment, because the [necessary] structures [here] are not in place.”

“I think it’s almost a moral crime for talent that exists to not reach its full potential,” Mensah continues.

“So Right to Dream does that, we select individual talent and football, cognitive ability, academics, [good] behaviour, and we give [students] the opportunity to dream big, and really succeed in ways that go beyond what they would otherwise have access to… Part of our manifesto is that excellence can be found anywhere.”

The academy’s coaches and teachers run trials each year, including some in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, which Mensah describes as “a talent hotbed”. The trials involve playing football in front of scouts, and then a cognitive ability test, which Mensah says is better than an academic test, because some of the students they take on have never been in a structured classroom before.

Near the end, about 60 children are invited to come to the campus for more than one week. Up to 20 are eventually chosen.

“It’s a painful process. A lot of tears,” Mensah says.

Boarding school is not unusual in Ghana, but the Right to Dream team try to build relationships with the students’ parents and even do home visits. From the time they are admitted, students travel home only three times a year – for a month in April, another month in August, and nearly a month at Christmas.

Children are never asked to leave on the basis of football or academic performance. “Our commitment is sticking with you all the way,” Mensah says, adding that the academy measures success in different ways. “Are you a good person, are you happy?”

It puts an emphasis on psychological care for its students, he says, holding classes on character building and “identity work” where teachers remind them that everyone has to walk their own path.

The possible fame and riches resulting from a successful football career are huge, but unlikely for all but the very best players. Very few young people will end up at the top and even when they do, football is a “finite” career, Mensah notes. He says children all initially want to be the next Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, but “our manifesto talks about expanding the dream”.

Otherwise, life could be hard for graduates.

“There’s a psychological piece that people don’t talk about. I’m sitting next to you in class, we play football together, we go to the same school, and then you get a multimillion [euro] contract and I have to go back to my local school. It plays on the mind. I watch you on my TV… It’s different if I never had that opportunity… [If a child has] been exposed to [that type of success] and had a taste of it, it actually makes [not achieving it] a little bit more painful,” Mensah says.

That’s why his students end each Monday morning assembly by saying together: “we are more than footballers”.

Right to Dream seeks to build networks of alumni that will support students once they leave. One former student, King Osei Gyan, now 33, went from the academy to playing for clubs including Fulham, Germinal Beerschot, and Viking, before returning to Right to Dream as its “director of purpose”. In 2018, Gyan was chosen to be part of Barack Obama’s Leaders Africa programme.

In 2016, the Right to Dream group expanded its network in a new way, acquiring Danish professional team Football Club Nordsjælland, which has its own academy in Denmark. FCN now plays its home matches in Right to Dream park, which has a capacity of more than 10,000. As many as six players in the team’s starting line up have come from the Ghanaian academy.

“The idea was we’d have a much more secure pathway for our best players going to Europe,” Mensah says. “FCN consistently will be the team that has the youngest squad in most of the European leagues.”

Right to Dream can then make money from transferring those players on, which can be pumped back into the non-profit organisation. Those fees have started getting bigger “as the quality of our players goes up,” Mensah says.

Last year, one of the academy’s graduates, 20-year-old Kamaldeen Sulemana, was signed by Stade Rennes in France for a reported €17 million.

Right to Dream follows the UK’s GCSE curriculum, and most students leave before their A Levels. They enter the school aged 10 or 11, with those who are less likely to become professional footballers often getting scholarships to go to boarding schools in the US around the age of 15, before continuing on to university there. Those on the professional football track usually move to Europe once they turn 18.

Last year, Forbes magazine said 61 of the then more than 140 Right to Dream graduates had played professional football, while around $45 million worth of scholarships had been raised for graduates to continue their studies in the US.

Mensah says he’s noticed already that many of these students go on to have an impact in their communities, by building infrastructure, helping friends or neighbours, or starting nonprofit ventures.

Various African football players have spoken publicly about what a professional player’s salary can do to help their communities back home.

“I was hungry, and I had to work in the field; I survived hard times, played football barefooted, I did not have an education and many other things, but today with what I earn thanks to football, I can help my people,” Liverpool player Sadio Mané, who comes from Senegal, has reportedly said.

“I built schools, a stadium, we provide clothes, shoes, food for people who are in extreme poverty. In addition, I give €70 per month to all people in a very poor region of Senegal which contributes to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips and even planes. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me,” he added.

In a classroom named after Nelson Mandela, a dozen students sit listening to a history teacher talking about the USA’s Great Depression. On the walls around them are photographs of famous black writers: Chinua Achebe; Ben Okra; Maya Angelou; Ayi Kwei Armah.

Each day, students start classes at 7.30am before breaking for breakfast, and finish at 1.30pm. They have a rest at 2.30pm, and from 4.30pm they have two hours of football training, four days a week, on one of the academy’s eight grass pitches. Dinner is at 6.30pm, and from 8pm they do homework. On Wednesdays they play other sports, such as tennis, rugby or basketball. On Saturdays, they have football matches.

Football is not the only area where Right to Dream has seen success. Josephus Christian Taylor (36), has been working at Right to Dream for more than 12 years, running the IT department and teaching robotics. He says the opportunities available there are ones he never could have imagined as a child.

A Facebook post by former UN secretary general, Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan, following a 2016 visit to the academy, made a big difference. A staff member at Lego saw it, leading to a Lego partnership, Taylor says, and they were sent many robotics kits. Now, robotics and computer programming are part of the curriculum for younger students.

The Right to Dream Academy has won multiple awards at Ghana’s national robotics competition. In 2018, the students also qualified for the international robotics competition in Detroit, Michigan, where they came eighth out of 23 participating countries.

Taylor says he’s always astounded by the talents children can have that may be going unrecognised.

“I see some of the kids who come here, they’ve never used a computer before but within a month they’re doing extraordinary things, they’re going above and beyond,” he says.

“I think if we did this nationwide we might discover some of the most brilliant minds in the tech space that could be industry leaders, because there aren’t opportunities in this country to develop that kind of talent.”

Learning robotics is a way into engineering, he notes, and Ghana needs more engineers. “We are a developing country. So it means we need a lot of people who know how to build stuff. I think engineering and sciences is what is needed to transform a country.”

But whatever they do next, he believes the lives of the children in the school have been “totally transformed”.

Taylor has been to many of the students’ homes because he takes them back for holidays. Some come from a background that’s “a whole different level of hardship and poverty”, where their opportunities otherwise could be “near zero”, he said.

“We’ve helped these kids and it will be their responsibility to also expand that help… [it’s] kind of a chain reaction.”