As the current GFA Women’s Football Strategy (2023-2026) comes to an end on December 31, 2026, the Association has already begun the necessary and relevant steps required to review it and prepare the next strategy for the next four years (2027 to 2031).
Under the current strategy, the Ghana Football Association has achieved a lot and a good starting point is a review and audit of the cycle. Renewing the GFA Women's Football Strategy requires a structured, phased process to shift the sport from the current gains to a sustaining professional level.
Under the current strategy, the Association has achieved a lot and taken the women game to a new height.
The Association introduced and sustained the “Football For Goals”, “Football For Girls” and the FIFA Women’s Football Campaign programmes, which takes women achievers in the women’s game to primary schools to positively engage young girls, their parents and their teachers and their community about women’s football.
These programmes have ensured that more young girls have become interested in playing the game or taking up roles such as refereeing – Catch Them Young Referees. There have been a lot of capacity building for the Catch Them Young Referees at the GFA Technical Centre leading to their excellence on the field of play.
There is no doubt that the Association’s policy of only having Women Match Officials for Women football played a huge part in this achievement.
Under the current strategy, more women have acquired their coaching licences, especially former players of our women’s game. The GFA sponsored a lot of free Licence D coaching courses. The Association also partnered others such as FIFA for free Licence C coaches. Those with C and B were also assisted to do their Licence B and A badges.
Today, we have more Licenced women coaches and more ladies, especially former players are being encouraged to enter coaching. There has been a number of Trainings for female Administrators and our women clubs.
Under the Education pillar, capacity building workshops for Women’s Division One Club Administrators was undertaken. This strengthened the administrative, organisational, and management competencies at the regional level. The initiative supports and improves club governance, professional administration, and the sustainable development of women’s football clubs in Ghana.
Perhaps one of the greatest achievements under the current GFA Women’s Strategy is the commencement of the U15 Regional Girls Colts League in each of the Ten (10) Football regions of Ghana, pilots in Norther Region and the Greater Accra region for a few years.
The pilot for U-17 Girls Colts football is ongoing and lesions gathered will be useful to expanding it to the entire country.
There have been growth and development of the women’s game with increase in the number of Clubs, the number of Players, Referees, Match Commissions, Women Administrators and competitions.
There is a U15 Elite Girls Championship yearly which bring the best U 15 players from the Regions to the national stage for the benefit of the national selectors. Under the League Development, the successfully launched the U15 Girls Regional Colts League aims to strengthen grassroots women’s football development in Ghana. The new pathway provides young girls with structured and competitive football opportunities across the regions, supports early talent identification, and establishes a pathway for developing future players for the national teams.
The Association is very proud that the U15 National Team double African Schools Champions (Ghana 2025 and Zimbabwe 2026) and are the defending champions.
The yearly Elite U17 Girls Championship continue to elevate talents from the regions to the national stage.
The U17 Women’s National Team has qualified too to the world stage. Once must also mention the ladies in the GFA Elite Academies.
There is Women’s Regional Division One League in each of the 10 football regions with winners gaining promotion to the flagship Women Premier League which has been expanded to 20 clubs under the period.
The league development programmes by the GFA, some with support from various partners have been progressively instrumental. There is also the invitational Women’s Super Cup for the Top 8 clubs of the Women’s Premier League.
The GFA is extremely grateful to the government, the Ministry of Sports and Recreation, the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service and indeed all its sponsors and partners in the development of the women’s game to this level (a different story will be told of your excellent support in the coming days).
A lot was achieved under marketing, sponsorship and promotion (Commercialisation).
Further, the development of a commercial strategy for the Women’s Premier League advances the development of a comprehensive commercial strategy for the Women’s Premier League (WPL), with the process now in its final phase.
The strategy will aim to strengthen the league’s commercial value, enhance brand positioning and media visibility, attract sponsorship and strategic partnerships, increase fan engagement, and establish sustainable revenue streams to support the long-term growth and professionalisation of women’s football in Ghana.
The Association holds the view that more can, and would be done under the nest strategy.
The Ghana Football Association’s Women’s Football Development unit under the Technical Directorate has been working with all internal stakeholders and the FIFA Women’s Football Development to navigate the key processes to achieve the next strategy for the women’s game in Ghana.
These steps include the review and audit of the current GFA Women’s Strategy, extensive stakeholder consultation, alignment with broader GFA corporate strategies, redefining pillars and targets for the new strategy, allocating financial commitments and the launch and campaigning of the new GFA Women’s Strategy.
The first step of review and audit the current strategy started over two months ago to critically measure the performance of their expiring framework. Quantitative data has been gathered on registered women players, female coaches, women referees and women administrators, viewer metrics, match attendance, and commercial revenue. Identify the few targets that were missed and those areas that needed adjustment. Highlighting of legacy areas such as standard player contracts, safeguarding training officers, integrity and clean game to build upon.
The Ghana Football Association working with FIFA will enter the next stage of Stakeholder Consultation. The GFA will hold a workshop to build alignment across the industry. This will include among others commercial partners, club representation, government and media.
As the remaining steps unfolds, the Ghana Football Association wishes to carry through this journey of building the new Women’s Football alignment with every stakeholder of the women’s game.
The Ghana Football Association looks forward to even more exciting and excellence execution of a new Women Football Strategy as well as the GFA Women’s Premier League Commercial Strategy.
GFA COMMUNICATIONS