China-funded stadium helps unearth sports talents in Ghana

The Chinese-built sports stadium in Cape Coast, a well-known historical and cultural city in Ghana, is helping the West African country unearth more talents.

Just a few years ago, the place was a wasteland covered with weeds and bushes.

Now, a 16,700-seat-capacity ultra-modern stadium furnished with eight runways, basketball courts, football pitch, handball court, box training field, athletes dormitories as well as other facilities rises straight from the ground.

The stadium, which looks like a shell sleeping on the beach, perfectly matches Cape Coast.

The sports complex was constructed by the China Jiangxi International Economic and Technical Cooperation, with a Chinese government grant of 30 million U.S. dollars.

Even before its inauguration, sportsmen and women in the Central Region of Ghana had been patronizing the stadium to train ahead of their various competitions.

The facility has enhanced business, and served as a training ground for many schools in the region.

Impressed with the construction of the stadium, Ghana's Sports Minister Nii Lantey Vanderpuije said early this month that the facility would revive the interest of the country's sports stars.

"I saw joy in the faces of the athletes who were running in the tracks, the boxers in the gym, the table tennis... were all happy. Their lives have been changed and their facilities transformed," he said.

With this new stadium, Ghana now has four venues with tartan tracks where athletics can take place, which is the key to the development of the country's athletes for international competitions.

"We have always decried the lack of attention for the so-called lesser-known sports. In this new stadium, we have all the facilities for training many of those athletes into world-class champions," said Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama.

Alex Osei-Mensah, Ashanti regional chairman for Disabled Sports, was highly elated for the provision of facilities to enhance physically-challenged sports in Ghana.

"It will help to lift up the disabled sports, those from the Central Region. I am very happy for that," he told Xinhua in a recent interview.