Kafui Dey interviews Ibrahim Sannie Daara

From Nima to the World: A Conversation with Ibrahim Sannie Daara

He was born at home in New Town on a Saturday dawn. His father had six radio sets tuned to the BBC, VOA, and Deutsche Welle simultaneously and could not read a single line of English. His mother held a PhD and was a head teacher of two schools, a director at the Ghana Education Service, and the founder of the biggest Muslim women's organization in Ghana in the 1990s. He was three years old when he started Class One because his mother was the head teacher and had to take him along. He did commentary for the BBC on the opening match of the 2010 World Cup and the final. He walked out of Soccer City that night and thought: if I die today, I am fulfilled. He is still going.

Ibrahim Sannie Daara is a journalist, broadcaster, football administrator, media entrepreneur, and CAF media officer. He runs eleven football websites from a small office in Nima, employs over two hundred people spread from Ghana to Nigeria to Kenya to Russia to Australia, and still sleeps three hours a night.

Day Three of the 2026 World Cup

Recording during the third day of the tournament, Ibrahim begins with his reservations about the edition itself. He chose not to travel. The distances between the three host nations were a deterrent, but the political climate in America was the larger concern. A top football agent in France told him he was not going for the same reason — a sentiment he says sits deeply in the football industry. A Somali referee he has worked with in CAF competitions, a top-class official, was denied the opportunity to go. Senegalese supporters were denied visas in significant numbers.

For Ibrahim the principle is clear: football is the only space in the world where societies in conflict can still find unity. That power is unique and must be protected. Political leaders and football leaders must reflect carefully on this and steer the sport away from political interference with greater deliberate force.

Thomas Partey and the Canadian Visa Decision

The interview was recorded the day after news emerged that Thomas Partey, whose signed jersey hangs in Ibrahim's office, had been denied entry into Canada. Ibrahim's response is measured but firm. The fundamental principle of common law, which Canada's own tradition upholds, is that a person is innocent until a court finds them guilty. No court of competent jurisdiction has found Partey guilty. The alleged crime did not take place in Canada. He has presented himself before the legal process every time required. He was allowed to travel to other countries. And yet Canada has denied him entry to play in a global sporting competition.

He draws the Benjamin Mendy case as a parallel — a player accused of serious offences on all of which the court found him not guilty, yet whose career, income, reputation, and confidence were destroyed in the interim. The accusers faced no consequences. Ibrahim believes this case pattern is deeply troubling and that the world must begin thinking more carefully about protecting the innocent while accusations are still being adjudicated.

He praises the United States and the United Kingdom for granting Partey access, and calls on Ghana's foreign minister and if necessary the President to continue pushing for reconsideration. He also notes that if Ghana qualifies deep into the tournament, Canada itself could become a venue for later matches. The clock is ticking and the damage being done is potentially irreparable.

As for the rumoured English players' refusal to shake hands, Ibrahim is direct: has any court found him guilty? Then behave accordingly. Let football have some decency.

Mexico v South Africa and African Unity

On the opening game, Ibrahim supported South Africa while acknowledging the anger from the rest of Africa was entirely understandable. The xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals in South Africa — the targeting of what are called illegal immigrants, often in reality legal residents and business owners who have built livelihoods on South African soil — had provoked genuine continental outrage. He recounts a friend whose Ghanaian father, a doctor living in the United States, wrote a personal cheque of $10,000 to the ANC in 1989 or 1990 to support the struggle against apartheid. That money then could have bought twenty plots of land in East Legon. That man's son watched African supporters turn against South Africa's team in the opening game of a World Cup. Ibrahim understands the disappointment and the anger. Algeria named its national stadium after Nelson Mandela. The depth of the continent's investment in South Africa's freedom is immeasurable.

But he pleads for proportionality. The people committing the attacks are a tiny minority. The law, not the mob, should deal with those who are in the country illegally. South Africans at large are warm and welcoming people and must not be defined by an extreme fringe. He calls on the African Union, which has taken up the matter, to find an amicable solution. Africans, he says simply, are brothers wherever they find themselves.

Why African Football Still Underperforms

The argument Ibrahim builds over the course of the conversation is structural and cumulative. Ghana is not underperforming because of talent. The neighborhood of Nima — where this interview is recorded, where Kudus grew up, where more than ten players currently playing top-level professional football abroad were raised — produces world-class talent with minimal facilities. Imagine, he says, what Nima could produce with proper full-size grass pitches. Imagine what Ghana could produce if every community had the facilities Morocco now has in almost every neighborhood.

Morocco's transformation is the reference he returns to repeatedly and with firsthand knowledge. He has been there six times this year alone, does consultancy work for their federation, and was inside their academy in Salé just outside Rabat. The video analysis department is headed by the person Liverpool used when Klopp won the Champions League — Morocco went and poached him. Their women's players receive a government-guaranteed base salary of $600 per month directly into their accounts, on top of whatever their club pays. Their national stadium near Dakar cost more than 250 million euros. After hosting the recent AFCON, tourism in Morocco grew by 600% according to the tourism ministry. The Moroccan FA is led by the country's finance minister — Fuzzy Leja — who also owns a club in the Moroccan league and now sits on the FIFA Council as the first vice president of CAF. When sport needs money in Morocco, the finance minister is already in the room.

In Ghana, $2 million for the national team triggers national debate for a decade. When Morocco had one video analyst per player at the last World Cup, Ghana had nothing comparable. These are not lucky coincidences on Morocco's part. They are the results of deliberate policy, sustained investment, and the deliberate deployment of expertise over politics.

He makes one specific, actionable proposal: revive the model where players in the domestic league are employed by state institutions — the military, the police, state companies, customs. This was how the Ghana domestic league was made viable in earlier generations. Players received combined income from their clubs and their government employer. When they retired, they had a job to return to and a pension. That model could stabilize the league and stop the exodus of players going to India, Thailand, and beyond in search of any income at all. He has spoken to a journalist from Vietnam who told him Ghanaian footballers have gone there unable to find playing opportunities and ended up in situations of profound degradation.

The 2014 Brazil Money Crisis: Being There

Ibrahim was in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup in a media capacity and was in the hotel when the cash bonus crisis unfolded. He had seen the tension building from the beginning — hotel complaints dating back to Miami, a series of meetings, dissatisfaction layered on dissatisfaction. The core problem was a history. For years, Ghanaian players had been promised payments and not received them. They had paid their own plane tickets when told the federation would cover costs. They had been made to feel that playing for the country was something they should do out of honour while the financial promises made to them quietly disappeared.

By the time the cash arrived physically in Brasília, the players did not trust any other mechanism. They wanted it in their hands. They went to the stadium carrying their own appearance fees in backpacks. The risk, the spectacle, the chaos of it all — including the slap of Moses Sikim — were the direct consequence of years of broken promises, not of greed. He was sitting next to Moses Sikim when it happened. He says plainly: that footballer who said those words to a man of Sikim's standing is now broke, while Sikim employs footballers throughout the country. But also plainly: if you make promises, keep them.

From Nima to the BBC: How It Happened

His father drove a Morris Minor and sold spare parts in Kokomlemle. He brought the Daily Graphic and the Times home every day, and Ibrahim's mother — the PhD holder, the head teacher — would have the children read the newspaper to her and report what was in the news. His father had six radio sets tuned to international broadcasters simultaneously. Ibrahim grew up listening to what his father listened to, then began tuning into the English-language programming himself — BBC, Canada Radio International, all of them.

He was a serial caller on Joy FM's sports show, which was then the only sports program on Ghanaian radio. The host used to come to the family's forex bureau in New Town to change money and began buying Ibrahim magazines. He was eventually invited onto the show. His first formal broadcasting opportunity came from Fifi Bansah. From there he began working at Choice FM with Benito Yao Pankra and Randy Abbe, helping produce what became the first sports radio program in Ghana to carry international football news. He memorized difficult foreign names — particularly from Turkey — and the program became famous for it.

While at Choice FM he was simultaneously at the University of Ghana studying religion, helping run the family forex bureau, and doing programs on Radio Universe. He taught neighborhood children during vacations for free. He saved money with the specific intention of pursuing further education.

He applied to Cardiff University, which runs one of the best journalism schools in the world. He was admitted. He commuted from Cardiff to London every day for a month during his internship at the BBC — train at 6 a.m., arriving by 8 a.m., paying his own fare. His thesis, on the exploitation of African players in Europe, was completed in two weeks and received a distinction. His supervisor told him the BBC had advertised a post. Around 180 people applied. Ten were interviewed. Two were appointed. He was one of them, called back the same day as his interview.

He spent eight years at the BBC, training at the BBC College, learning everything from how to write for broadcast to how to run a multilingual football website as an editor. The training he received — the ethics, the preparation discipline, the commitment to accuracy — changed everything about the way he worked. He references a morning when he was the only editor on duty and had to upload a photograph of JJ Okocha receiving the BBC African Footballer of the Year award and could not find the cropping tool. He phoned the World Service. A colleague named Ben White told him where it was. The story went up. His bosses never knew he was sweating.

Ghana Soccer Net and Eleven Websites

He started Ghana Soccer Net in late 2007 in his small London flat, working after hours until two or three in the morning, persistently. It was launched on the 24th of December 2007 in Emmanuel Addo's flat in Swiss Cottage, London, over banku and tilapia cooked by Addo's girlfriend Charity. At that time Ibrahim could see from his role as editor on the BBC African Football website that there were too many news items relevant to Ghanaian audiences that could not make it onto the BBC platform. Ghana Soccer Net was the vessel for them.

He came back to Ghana in 2011 partly because he felt the BBC was losing its grip on Africa — local radio stations were now everywhere and breaking news faster, the youth were connecting more with music and reality shows than with current affairs programming, and he had ideas that were not being adopted. He proposed a countdown show on African music years before the BBC launched This is Africa. He proposed a university current affairs quiz competition. He proposed focusing on Nigerian films. None of it happened then. It has mostly happened since.

The websites he runs now employ over two hundred people in multiple countries. One staff member wrote for the Sun newspaper in the UK. He came from Ghana Soccer Net where his daily target was twenty articles. When he arrived at the Sun, one article a day felt manageable. He told Ibrahim: your training there has helped us.

The GFA Years and What He Learned

He joined the Ghana Football Association as Director of Communications and Deputy General Secretary in 2011 at the persistent request of Randy Abbe and the then-president. He set up a communications department where none existed, built the GFA website using the same team that had built Ghana Soccer Net, and introduced the practice of recording audio interviews to distribute across multiple radio stations simultaneously — a model he had observed from World Rugby Union's distribution to the BBC.

His proudest achievement in that role was setting up a functioning department from nothing. His biggest admitted mistake was going further than necessary in his public responses to a minister who had held his hand earlier in his career. He saw the minister later and they laughed about it. He wishes he had used a different approach given the relationship between them.

What he learned most about leadership he learned from watching Kwesi Nyantakyi. The man was brilliant, sharp, a genuine strategist who gauged opinion from his driver and his secretary as readily as from senior officials. He would ask what people in town were saying about a decision. He was so open that it ultimately made him vulnerable. He spent days with the Anas team, taking them to lunch, having normal conversations — the kind of conversations anyone might have that, edited and taken out of context, become something else entirely. Ibrahim is convinced the operation was planned from within the football family by people who wanted to take over the running of football in the country. He was himself targeted. A cut-and-paste misrepresentation of a conversation he had at the Accra Sports Stadium — in which he firmly told a manager that nobody can fix a player into the national team and that the right way to get called up is to work hard — was used against him. He was cleared. He did not take it to court because he knew himself.

Nyantakyi could not eat at one point. His wife would call Ibrahim. Then a group of imams from the community went to visit him and spoke to him about the tests life sends. That was the turning point. He is essentially the same man he was before — still sharp, still funny, still formidable — but more cautious about who he opens his office to.

CAF and the Continent

CAF found him through his work with the federation on match organization. He began being appointed as media officer for CAF Champions League matches and gradually became embedded in the operations of the confederation. He has been to almost every country on the continent, goes to Morocco six times a year, and does private consultancies for several federations.

The confederation's president, Patrice Motsepe, is the fourth richest man in Africa. He donates $10 million per year to CAF from his own pocket, uses his private jet to attend meetings, and has not taken a single cedi from the organization. Ibrahim challenges anyone to suggest this man can be corrupted by money. What football gives people is not money — it is power, access, and the ability to walk into rooms that money alone cannot open.

The AFCON final result reversal — where Senegal was announced the winner and subsequently the matter went before CAF's judicial bodies with a different outcome — was the most stressful work experience of his career. He slept in the office. Calls came from Senegalese colleagues, Moroccan supporters, football family members across the continent. He respects the independence of the judicial process and believes FIFA has since changed relevant laws in direct response to what happened. He cannot say more while the matter remains before the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Nima: The Community That Made Him

He returns repeatedly in this interview to Nima — not as a backdrop but as a living argument. The community produces world-class footballers with almost no facilities. It produces doctors, it produces his classmate from Presbyterian Boys Secondary School who is now a senior surgeon at Komfo Anokye. It produces accountants working at the Bank of Ghana who were children he tutored for free during university vacations. It produces a deeply integrated religious community where the Catholic man on the street, Shabbashi, tells the Muslim community where to position the head of the deceased for burial — because he has attended every funeral, every naming ceremony, every moment of crisis for so many years that he simply knows.

When his grandmother died, he told one friend he was going to Dakuman. He did not ask anyone to spread the word. By the time he reached the cemetery, three bus loads of people from Nima had arrived ahead of him, followed by five more bus loads later that afternoon. People who barely knew him beyond a daily greeting had come. This, he says, you will not find anywhere in the world.

His mother, now having suffered a debilitating stroke, remains an inspiration in the community. She was the person who changed the narrative in the Zongo communities about formal education — who demonstrated through her own life that you could go to school, become a head teacher, hold a PhD, lead a national Muslim women's organization, appear on GTV to educate women, and remain entirely Muslim. She removed the fear. She created the opening. A generation of Nima children went to Presbyterian Boys because of her, and many have now gone there themselves.