‘We are the backbone of the team’: Unistar Soccer Academy’s supporters’ club and local development in Ghana

A recurring theme in the growing academic literature is that African fandom of local teams is in decline whereas support of European teams is growing. This article challenges such pessimistic views by shifting the focus to the supporters of Unistar Soccer Academy in Ghana. It examines the reciprocal relationship between the academy and its supporters’ club with the primary goal of analysing how each side contributes to the other in promoting social, cultural, and economic development goals. To do so, the article combines ethnographic research with a postcolonial framework that considers social, economic, cultural, and psychological aspects to explore the attraction of fans to Unistar. The relationship between fans and Unistar provides an interesting example of how mutual aspirations for progress, capitalism, and locality coexist, in contrast to the current nature of the modern commercialized world of football, where the ties between fans and their clubs are increasingly growing.