Ghana sees football feast lifting image and economy

By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA (Reuters) - While political protests blight Kenya, Ghana will polish its image as a tourism and investment destination when it hosts the 2008 African Nations Cup soccer finals starting on Sunday.

Staging Africa's most prestigious sporting event will cast a positive international spotlight on the small but stable West African state when much of the world's poorest continent is still convulsed by conflict, disease and poverty.

Organisers hope the event will also shower as much as $1 billion (510 million pounds) on Ghana's fast-growing economy, mostly through the tourism, service and advertising sectors but also trickling down to taxi drivers and street vendors selling food and trinkets.

"Almost everybody, every community is benefiting," Ghana's Finance Minister Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu said in an interview with Reuters in London this week.

He said the country, which has hosted the African Nations Cup finals three times and won four times, would try to use the income to generate more economic activity and prepare to stage even more prestigious international events.

Ghana would bid in coming decades to host the African Games, the Commonwealth Games, the Olympics and the World Cup, he said.

"We are now in the spotlight of the world -- it's a rare image-building opportunity," said Fred Pappoe, vice-chairman of the Ghana Football Association (GFA).

He described the three-week tournament, which will be played in the capital and three other venues, as a "massive feast" for soccer fans and ordinary Ghanaians.