WHO WE ARE
Cameroon has indeed made significant contributions to global sports, primarily by being the first African team to reach the FIFA World Cup quarterfinals in 1990, including winning multiple Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) titles and a football Olympic gold medal in Sydney 2000. The nation is a sports powerhouse and a source of global talent, showcasing stars like Samuel Eto’o who was one-time highest paid footballer in the world, two-times triple jump Olympic gold medalist Françoise Mbango and former UFC heavy-weight world champion Francis Ngannou.
Cameroon is still regarded today as one of Africa’s greatest football-playing nations and in many parts of the nation, the dream of becoming a professional athlete is one that thousands of children by as early as 8 years aspire to achieve. These aspirants look up to their parents and schools for support and answers as they grow. Unfortunately, that is not the preoccupation or mandate of primary and secondary schools across the national territory.
Interestingly, the vast majority of households where our aspirants or trainees come from are low-income earners who don’t usually have enough to go around for their children’s school needs and so, the burden of enabling the fulfilment of dreams seems to fall on sports entities like us. Somehow, we are often expected to make the most of these dreamers with usually very little or nothing to go with. Africa Dream International Sports Academy (ADISA) was created in 2012 and became both fastest growing and the largest sports academy in Cameroon by 2014. Our operations drive intervention in two domains; Youth Empowerment and Gender Equality.
That is why in recent years, we keenly look to ameliorate the marginalization of girls in sport through innovative programs which give girls more access to sport and this commitment to youth empowerment and gender equality brings to bear enormous responsibility at ADISA. Building and preserving a long-term commitment to serve our beneficiaries and stakeholders along with an uncompromising respect for our values is the daily requirement at ADISA, which has shaped our identity as a trailblazer in the sports industry in Cameroon
WHAT WE DO
ADISA’s mission is to provide all-round development to aspiring boys and girls through early identification and consistent training, enabling them lead more productive lives in accordance with their needs and interests. For many youths in Cameroon, sports participation after school or on weekends represents an opportunity to chase a dream to be the next Samuel Eto’o, Françoise Mbango or Francis Ngannou. While this is mostly true for boys, the opposite can be said about girls, who continue to live relegated lives in the shadows of their male counterparts. We have responded to this need by creating a girls-sports-friendly environment through the Be The Next project which gives girls more access to sport, enabling them learn to love it more, learn to play better, develop physically and emotionally, and to go as far as to earn a living from it. But giving girls more access alone will not constitute a comprehensive solution.
We must go beyond creating more access for them, into unique solutions that bridge the gap between active aspirants and their heroes, or between a dream and greatness. We have a mandate to groom high-performance athletes for national and international opportunities and markets in a bid to achieve our goal as social entrepreneurs. Preliminary steps included the exploits delivered by our Under 14 Boys at the 2019 Dubai Super Cup which featured 114 teams from around the world, where the boys returned to Cameroon with a finalist medal of honor. Today, we have 2 annual championship events in football and track athletics for both boys and girls organized by ADISA.
OUR HISTORY
Created in 2012 in the city of Limbe, ADISA launched its operations in football through its first club called Africa Dream FC in the national football federation’s (FECAFOOT) Fako Departmental League, securing a quick qualification to the South West Regional League in the same year. Africa Dream FC’s senior team featured in 4 FECAFOOT seasons until 2016 when new approaches to our core strategy emerged with a chief aim to inspire, support and groom much younger athletes, enabling them secure enough time to grow to be all they can be. These approaches permitted us to recruit down to 7-year-old children and enabled the creation of satellite centers which saw ADISA expand across the South West Region. By opening 3 Recruitment and Training Centers (RTCs) in 2014 in the towns of Limbe, Buea and Tiko, ADISA became the fastest growing and the largest sports academy in Cameroon in terms of number of trainees with more than 250 trainees in the 3 RTCs. Still in 2014, we added Track Athletics and Basketball to the training program and later in 2015 we introduced Floorball.
However, Football and Track Athletics remain the principal focus. In 2015, we secured a grant for our work with grassroots football from Total Change Missions in the Netherlands founded by former Indomitable Lions vice-captain Eyong Enoh, to support our work with the youths. Our drive for change in the industry brought remarkable improvements in both our development model and our capabilities as a social entrepreneur. Within two years from creating the 3 RTCs, Africa Dream FC U12 boys’ team won both the 2016 and 2017 editions of the Brasseries Top Cup in Limbe. This prompted several conversations on the need for the boys to find expression at an international platform. By the end of 2017, a grant from the Tony Elumelu Foundation was secured for Africa Dream FC and this greatly enhanced our efforts in 2018 to launch an overseas tour project. An Africa Dream FC U14 team finally travelled in April 2019 for the Dubai Super Cup along with 114 teams from around the world and returned to Cameroon with a finalist medal of honor.
A WORD FROM THE CEO
Twelve years ago in 2014, ADISA became the fastest growing and the largest sports academy in Cameroon after establishing 3 Recruitment and Training Centers (RTCs) which secured more than 250 trainees in 3 towns. Today, we are the leading private institution in the sports industry, creating an environment where youths and children as young as 7 years old can develop their innate abilities as they grow, as well as valuable skills necessary to ensure a more successful adulthood. We offer a much wider range of aptitude enhancement apart from sports, expressed through the Be The Next project which secures the involvement of hundreds of female aspirants in Football, Track Athletics, Photography, Journalism, Afro-dance, etc.
Our goal to steward massive changes in the industry landscape is being realized by creatively boosting both an athlete-friendly and a girls-sports-friendly environment, in order to enable more access to sport for girls, and drive engagement and performance to ever higher levels. We enable our aspirants reach the next leap for their dream in a sustainable manner, through outcome-oriented solutions which anticipate and manage their needs and interests. This enables them to be free to dream and be all they can be and this is the ADISA way. In 2018, we succeeded to open our 4th RTC in the Littoral Region – Douala RTC, cementing our position as the fastest growing and largest sports academy in Cameroon. Because we run multiple satellite RTCs across the country, it is needful for us to raise comprehensive standards to protect and drive our ecosystem forward with a reliable culture of integrity and compliance.
2019 brought more fame through the Dubai Super Cup, a rollercoaster project executed in the peak of the Anglophone Crisis characterized by zero sponsorship, tight deadlines and demanding clients and collaborators. Indeed, the merits of our success mostly fall on our ability to conduct our business with integrity and passion, not only because these are the standards that our communities and families expect from us, but because this is an integral part of who we are. To be candid, the pressures of the last few years especially after emerging from COVID in 2022 have been truly grinding. Notwithstanding, ADISA continues to steadily improve her capacity and potential to deliver strong on her mandate. We are aware that if our actions must be meaningful, then we must ensure that our young athletes are constantly being challenged in an environment that best inspires their development.
This is what we must do to maintain our ambition and build on our vision to change the world around us and so far, we are emerging one athlete stronger, one dream closer and one family happier. With more than 600 girls and boys enrolled at ADISA in 2026, we actually do shoulder great responsibility shaping the next generation of Cameroon professional athletes, entrepreneurs, journalists, photographers, dance artists and female advocates. Our current interactions and relationships with these future stakeholders will need to be guided over the long term by the highest standards of integrity.
This is why even though we have a zero-tolerance policy regarding corruption and fraud, keen attention is given to the abuse of children, youth and particularly girls. A lot of appreciation goes to our wonderful staff who over the years have maintained a positive attitude, discipline and consistency of standards because they knew that in the end, we are measured not by how much we undertake, but by what we finally accomplish. Thank you for the interest you have shown in our work and the time you set aside to go through our website. We look forward to engaging with you some time soon. May God continue to keep you in His great custody, even as He has kept us this far.
