African Games: LOC chairman gives update on Borteyman, Legon projects

The Executive Chairman of the Local Organising Committee (LOC), of the 2023 African Games, Dr Kwaku-Ofosu Asare, is confident facilities for hosting the Games would be completed on schedule.

With just a year to the start of the competitions, the LOC boss said contractors were working round the clock to meet the agreed timelines and was confident the various projects would be delivered for test runs ahead of the start of the13th African Games in Accra on the March 8, 2024.

After touring the project sites yesterday, Dr Ofosu-Asare described the pace of work as “encouraging” and said he was optimistic that the contractors would deliver on their promise to complete the work on schedule.

“What we are doing at the moment is to work hard with the facilities at Borteyman [Olympic Complex which is earmarked to host the swimming, boxing and indoor sporting events] and at the University of Ghana Stadium, Legon. Legon is far advanced; we just had a meeting today and the contractor is expected to finish everything by July.

“Then, we have the contractor who is also handling the Games Village and is also expected to hand over in July. With regards to the one working at Borteyman, he will have a bit of time until February next year to fine-tune the works.

Dr Ofosu-Asare said even though people had not seen a major transformation at the Borteyman project site, it did not mean nothing was going on there, explaining that most of the equipment were prefabricated and would soon be put together once the ground works were complete.

He, however, stated that by next Tuesday [March 14], the LOC would be able to take a final decision on whether or not the aquatic centre should still be closed or opened, as experts had advised against the construction of a roofed aquatic centre, which takes a much longer time to complete and was also inimical to Ghana’s weather conditions.

“For Borteyman, the key facility there is the swimming pool. With the swimming pool what came up yesterday was that we can have the open one, and if we are to have the open one, it’s not going to take them that long to complete. It is the closed one, that is the one with the roof over the pool, that will take a bit of time.

“We have the tennis court also being constructed over there and it’s also at an advanced stage. We are going to have both the open court and the roofed court and there is every assurance that they [contractors] would be able to finish on time.

On the issue of funding of these projects, Dr Ofosu-Asare stated that even though Ghana was going through challenging times financially, the government was fully funding the project.

“People are also worried about the funding; the government is funding all these. We know we are going through tough times but there is the commitment and the President has given us every assurance that we will definitely host the Games come what may,” he said.