In about a decade or two to come, never again will it be mentioned that football age-fraud conundrum got any of the junior national teams of Ghana disqualified from an international tournament like experienced in the past.
The practice of age-cheating or age-doping, is not limited to Ghana, but synonymous with South Sahara-Africa (SSA) and is as old as Methuselah (the longest-living human being). It is argued that due to the paucity of birth records in Africa, age cheating has long been a problem on the continent, just that technology to detect it in the 80s and 90s did not exist.
In Africa, the identification of chronological age has often been a difficult challenge, as registration at birth wasn’t compulsory. This gives room for falsification of true age, which could lead to cheating It has been argued that age, experience, body size and stage of puberty contribute considerably, in different combinations, to the variance of some football skills such as dribbling with a pass, ball control with the body and shooting accuracy.
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) began using the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans to determine the age of football players in 2009. Its decision was backed by data-driven evidence which showed that Africa and South American countries especially were presenting players older than the stipulated age-limits for its competitions that required age limit.
Brief History In 2007, following Nigeria’s triumph on penalties at the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, the head coach of the losing side, Spain U-17 team, Juan Santisteban, felt cheated and said: “I respect what other people think about the improving Africans, but the players on my team are all under 17 years old. I would really like to know the exact ages of players on the Nigeria team.”
This profound statement was also believed to influence FIFA’s decision to find a solution leading to the MRI introduction two years on.
“MRI has been adopted as a definitive measure for fair play by the International Federation of Association Football,” FIFA stated at the time of its introduction. FIFA first launched the programme of random MRI wrist screening to verify the age of players competing in the Under-17 World Cup hosted by Nigeria in October 2009.
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) have also adopted same since 2011 and has been using the MRI scans to verify the age of players in African football competitions. It is noteworthy that historically, countries from Asia and South America have also been implicated in age cheating, so it isn’t an entirely African thing.
The continent has won seven World Cups at under-17 level -Nigeria leads with five followed by Ghana with two but Ghana also won the U20 World Cup in 2009. Unfortunately, these successes could not be replicated at senior national teams’ level, with Ghana’s run to the World Cup quarterfinal in 2010 and Morocco’s semifinal finish at Qatar 2022 being the continent’s best runs.
This to some extend justified the notion that these trophies were won with football-age fraud players. The Africa Situation Just last year, 2024, three nations- Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone had some players disqualified before the start of the West African Football Union (UFOA) U-17 tournament for presenting age-fraud players. In 2023, MRI testing decimated the Cameroon and DR Congo squads for the U-17 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), with the latter pulling out altogether.
Cameroon had 32 players ruled out of its 2023 Under-17 AFCON regional qualifiers whilst DR. Congo had 25 of its 40-strong squad failing, a decision that forced them to pull out of the competition. As recently as 2019, Guinea was kicked out of the Under-17 World Cup after they were found to have falsified the ages of two of their players. The CAF in 2019, stopped six players from taking part in the U-17 Africa Cup of Nations in Tanzania after they failed MRI tests which determine their age and eligibility to take part. Cameroon was the most affected team with three players failing the tests, while hosts Tanzania have two and Guinea one.
In 2016, a Nigerian U-17 team were wiped out of a competition as all but only two players failed the age test. Nigeria football was badly hit at the time as an astonishing 26 players failed age tests carried out ahead of an Under-17 African Cup of Nations qualifier. This is just a hand full of the many reported incidents of age-fraud on the continent’s youth talent development in the sporting space.
Ghana are using the Ghana national identity cards that are linked to most of the governmental institutions to check age cheating. However, some of the ages on the card are questionable as the person might have already falsified the date for the card registration which took place as recently as 2019. However, in the long term, the National Identification Authority (NIA) has commenced the registration of minors and babies at birth in two initiatives that will serve as a database for age verification.
The first one, which is dubbed Ghana card registration for minors, targeted children aged between six and 14 years. The original Ghana Card registration process only captures citizens 15 years and above. Therefore, the minors programme is to bring on board this left-out group. Beyond that, the second part of the initiative targets registering babies from birth to five years old. It is noteworthy that this type of registration is usually linked to the mother of the baby until the child turns six years old when the data is transferred to the child permanently. Therefore, no card is issued to the child.
The Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Wisdom Kwaku Deku, in a Right to Information (RTI) request, said: “The Ghana card at birth registration exercise which started in March 2024, is spearheaded by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in collaboration with the Births and Deaths Registry and is not limited to specific hospitals or health centres.”
The secretary indicated however that the registration process has some challenges including duplication of the submitted data, the inability of health workers to accurately capture images (photographs) of the data subjects as part of the registration process, weak and unstable network in some parts of the country resulting in delayed verification results.
Expert Opinion Head of Administration & Operations, East Legon Football Academy, Alfred Christ Agidi, on a scale of 1-10, rated the initiative’s effectiveness as six.
“Despite it being a significant step towards creating a robust identification system in Ghana, it is not enough solutions to age fraud in sports at the youth level or any level due to its complex nature. Personally, on a scale of 1-10, Ghana cards at birth should be on a scale of six,”he said.
He further mentioned inefficient enforcement and compliance to be a challenge, adding that the NIA’s data management and integration hasn’t been integrated with sports organizations’ systems to ensure seamless verification and authentication.
“I strongly believe that while the issuance of Ghana cards at birth is a positive step towards reducing age fraud in sports, it is not a foolproof solution. Effective enforcement and compliance and continuous monitoring and evaluation are necessary to ensure the integrity of the identification system and to prevent age fraud in sports,” he emphasised.
The football administrator proposed that the Ghana Football Association (GFA) must collaborate with the NIA to integrate its database with its system to aid regional football associations (RFAs) to verify player information such as players’ ages, names, and other personal details.
“GFA must develop a culture of conducting a regular age verification for players throughout their development journey. The football body must invest in establishing a national player database accessible to relevant stakeholders to track player information and prevent age cheating,” he stated.
Additionally, he stressed the need for putting punitive measures in place and enforcing penalties such as fines, suspensions, or expulsion for non-compliance. By implementing these measures, football academies, youth development programmes, and sports agencies can effectively leverage the Ghana Card to prevent age cheating in football and promote a culture of integrity and fair play.
The Ghana Card serves as a crucial component of Ghana’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Thus, a network of digital systems and services that allow governments to deliver public services efficiently and securely to citizens, essentially acting as a foundational digital infrastructure for a country, enabling access to services like digital identity, payments, data sharing, and government records.
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