Ghana

The Ghanaian team dominated their Group D match against Serbia on Sunday, as the Black Stars got off to the ideal World Cup start with a 1-0 victory against their head coach Milovan Rajevac’s hotly tipped compatriots. With a weak Australia still to play, they are moving tantalisingly close to the last 16, with the best result of any African team so far. The only blip on their horizon- and it’s a big blip, let’s be honest- is the ever-threatening German team that thrashed Australia 4-0 over the weekend in an aggressive, clinical display.

Australia qualified easily from their World Cup group this time around, but their form does not look like it has carried over into the finals tournament: Ghana will be looking forward to their match on Saturday (19^th June) and definitely hoping for a win.

The Serbian side that Ghana beat has also looked promising in the qualifiers, and was not entirely without teeth on Sunday either- they are still looking to qualify for the second round and will definitely consider it achievable in spite of the certainty of a tough game against Germany on Friday (18^th June). If they can score points this week, they should not be counted out!

The Germans are not the terrifying proposition that they once were, but they’re always going to threaten big things at a World Cup finals tournament. They’ve reached more semifinals than any other team in the world, and won the tournament more times than anybody apart from Brazil. Their team has recently undergone significant change, and the inexperience of some of the newer players may yet show this year: However, their demolition of Australia set down an imposing marker for the other teams in their group. Germany will expect to qualify for the last 16 at the top of their group, and will be disappointed with anything less than a semifinal place this year.

Ghana themselves have one of the most successful footballing histories of any African nation- the Black Stars have won the African Cup of Nations a full four times, were runners-up this year and are certainly on form coming into this World Cup. Their game against Serbia showed some very convincing attacking play and some solid defending- the only real worry on the footballing side was the lack of a clear finisher at the front: It eventually took a penalty earned for a handball in the Serbian box for striker Asamoah Gyan to put the ball in contact with the Serbian net. However, their disciplined play and attacking ethos mean that they’re well-placed to go through to the second round!

Ghana’s success on the football pitch mirrors its success at home- it is rated as one of the most stable and best- governed nations in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, and its abundant natural resources have helped to reduce the percentage of its population below fifty per cent and give it quite a good GDP by African standards. On the other hand almost thirty per cent still live in poverty, just under half of the population cannot read or write and the country is still dependant on foreign aid and the national debt. There is still, then, plenty of room for improvement in Ghana, not least in the education system- and plenty of space for Computers 4 Africa, with your support, to get involved!