The West African nation of Ghana sustains its economy by virtue of exporting gems, crude petroleum, precious metals, cocoa beans, fruits and nuts. One other thing Ghana has a reputation for cultivating is world champion boxers, beginning with David Kotey (DK Poison), who floored and unseated WBC featherweight titleholder Ruben Olivares in 1975. Nine years later, Azumah Nelson, known as ‘The Professor’ and arguably the all-time greatest African boxer, joined the lineage of that very same title by knocking out Wilfredo Gomez in the second to last round while trailing the defending champion on two out of three scorecards at the time.
There was also Nana Konadu, Ike Quartey, Joshua Clottey,
and, more recently, Isaac Dogboe, Joseph Agbeko, and Richard Commey, as well as
several world title contenders like Roy Ankrah, Floyd Robertson, Ben Tackie, and
Joshua Buatsi to name just a few. Some of these fighters, in addition to others,
are featured in the pages of the illustrated storybook B For Bukom by
Sarah Lotus Asare which takes the reader on an alphabetical tour of Ghana’s
boxing heroes, heritage, and history. As you will soon learn in the process of
getting to know Sarah, it’s very obvious that no one is better suited to the
task.
Described as “a Ghanaian boxing development advocate,
storyteller, cultural curator, and one of the emerging voices redefining how
boxing is viewed in Ghana and beyond,” Sarah is deeply rooted to the
communities of Bukom and Jamestown specifically. B For Bukom was an
innovation of hers that served the purpose of “ensuring that the legacy of
Ghanaian boxing is remembered beyond championship titles and fight records,”
says Sarah. “Boxing can serve as a pathway for confidence, identity,
opportunity, and community transformation.”
Sarah followed up the publication of B For Bukom by
curating Atswele Sane: Aspects of Ghana’s Boxing Heritage, an exhibition which
ran from August 20 to Sept. 2, 2025 at the University of Ghana’s Museum of
Archaeology and Heritage Studies that she says, “brought together photographs,
stories, historical elements, and lived experiences from Ghana’s boxing spaces,
helping audiences see boxing as an important cultural and historical
institution rather than simply a combat sport.” Boxing means so much more to
Sarah than merely as an intellectual subject. It is a societal touchstone and a
vital component to her genetic code.
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| (Sarah and a young boxer with Azumah Nelson at WBC Cares event) |
“In terms of my experience growing up in Ghana, it was pretty much like every other person’s upbringing. For most of my childhood, the focus was to be in school, to study and things of that sort,” Sarah tells me. What wasn’t so commonplace about Sarah’s childhood was having boxers like Bastie Samir, Duke Micah, and many others pay regular visits to her home. This was because they came to sit beneath the learning tree that is Sarah’s father, Dr. Kwesi Ofori Asare, longtime head coach of the Ghanaian National Boxing Team, called the Black Bombers, and technical director of the Ghana Boxing Federation (GBF), who continues to operate out of the renowned Wisdom Boxing Gym in Accra. “One of my fondest memories as a child is when my dad came back from the Beijing Olympics. And because he was in Beijing, you know, they have a lot of electronics there,” recalls Sarah. Her father brought back a sampling of the latest technological devices for the family, she says, “and he even gave me a smartphone at that time.”
Coach Asare’s accomplishments as the trainer of the Black
Bombers are as remarkable numerically as they are inspirational in a way that
transcends sports. “He’s been in four Olympic cycles, won Ghana’s only—and
Africa’s only—bronze medal with Samuel Takyi in 2020. This year they are
preparing to go to the Commonwealth Games and I would say that currently the
professional boxers that we have in Ghana that are doing well, definitely 99
percent of them have gone through his hands at some point,” says Sarah.
“He’s done so much, won over 150-something medals in
different colors—gold, bronze, silver—and that is the quantifiable aspect,” Sarah
explains. “But I think that the one thing that people have to see as his legacy
is how he’s so affected many people’s lives in the form of being a coach and
also by training coaches. Because several of the boxers that come to the gym,
maybe they start training there around the ages of six and five and several of
them, they have very little supervision or guidance at home and the gym is the
place that they get all the discipline and even the focus on life that they
need.”
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| (Sarah with her father, Coach Kwesi Ofori Asare) |
While Sarah’s journey into the boxing world began by pursuing a scholarly route which in turn led her down an administrative path, her sister initially took a hands-on approach in the literal sense. “My dad actually did not want me to get involved in boxing,” she says. “He taught all of us but at the beginning stages, my younger sister, she was the boxer. She had the opportunity to be mentored by people like Lesley Sackey. She’s a British Ghanaian boxer. And a number of high profile Cuban coaches she had an opportunity to work with but when she went to senior high school, she decided not to do boxing. She’s currently in law school,” Sarah informed me. “The fundamental aspect of how I came into the sport was basically as an academic assignment to find out the reason or the rationale behind why people box and when I first started off, people did not know I was affiliated to my dad. So they would relate to me on a very neutral level and some would answer my questions, some would not, but I was resilient.”
Sarah’s resilience paid off in many ways, not the least of
which was gaining a deeper appreciation for the immeasurable value placed upon
her father by members of the boxing community and, even more importantly, the Ghanaian
community. “I would say my dad played a very important role in me wanting to
work in sports especially when I started doing a lot of my research. Speaking
to different people about key players in the sport, his name kept coming up and
those moments I felt very proud, like having such a person as my dad because
people held him in very high regard and he had impacted the lives of so many
people,” she says.
“As I was speaking to different people, not even people from
his own club but people from different clubs, coaches, referees, officials,
different people, and at the time, they didn’t even know who I was. So they
were being very honest, looking at the work that he was doing and how he’s able
to impact the life of other people. And as a person, I’m also interested in
social work,” Sarah continues. “I felt that boxing would give me this avenue to
be able to impact the lives of other people, especially seeing that my dad is
able to do that. Even up to now he’s one of the people I look up to because every
day he’s always put a human face to everything. He doesn’t look at boxers just
as projects that need to be featured. He always tries to make sure that
whatever he does with the fighter, he’s able to change their life and also
impact those around them.”
Sarah’s term paper on boxing for the University of Ghana,
where she graduated with a BA and MPhil in Archaeology and is working towards her
PhD in Museum and Heritage Studies, provided the point of entry to what has
evolved into a lifelong commitment to the sport she has grown up around and
learned to love with a passion that matches her father’s. Over the course of
time, she took on an increasingly active role within the Wisdom Boxing Gym which
Sarah says, “focuses heavily on youth development, athlete visibility, women’s
participation in sport, and creating opportunities for young boxers both
locally and internationally” through initiatives that merge boxing with
education, media, tourism, and community development.
As Organizing Secretary for the Greater Accra Boxing
Association (GABA), Sarah originated the Girls Box Tournament and the Books B4
Hooks program. Footballer turned martial artist and boxer Janet Acquah, who
hails from the impoverished fishing village of Chorkor, caught Sarah’s
attention when she competed in the inaugural Girls Box event. After being
scouted by Asare, Janet would go on to become the first female boxer to medal
at the All African Games and win a bout representing Ghana at the 2024 Olympic
qualifiers in Senegal. Acquah has one professional MMA fight under her belt (a
2025 submission defeat to Felista Mugo) and is planning a transition to the
paid ranks in boxing.
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| (Sarah with Janet Acquah) |
Sarah credits GABA official Alex Ntiamoah Boakye with thinking up the catchy name Books B4 Hooks, but otherwise it was her brainchild and pet project. “When I started working with the Greater Accra Boxing Association and I was given the opportunity to host events that I cared about, I wanted every event that I do to have a social impact aspect to it,” she related to me. “So, Books B4 Hooks came about when I did under-15 and under-17 tournaments and I gave them books before because I wanted to encourage the boxers at the time to go back to school, or to stay in school for those that were in school. Some of the things that we did at the time with my team was to hold the events on the weekend so that the boxers that are in school can participate. And also, in addition to the prizes, the boxers were given scholarships to cover their tuition and also equipment. Things that would foster the importance for them to know that you don’t only have to be a boxer that stays in the gym all day but you also have to learn the basic things of reading and writing. And it’s a principle that I live by.”
Which brings us back to Sarah’s book, B For Bukom. “It’s something that came up from the research that I did speaking to the different people. I realized that there are so many people in the sports who have impacted Ghana boxing over time from the coaches, the officials, the referees, but often the boxers are the only ones that people really recognize. So I was like, okay, how can I translate my research to a form that can be available to everyone? Something that children can read, something that parents can read to their children?” she mused. “And basically the book uses each of the alphabets to highlight some of the achievements and contributions that different individuals have done for the sport. For instance, when you go to the letter S, I have the Samir brothers. These are three brothers (Bastie, Issah, and Shakul) who have all represented Ghana at the Commonwealth Games and all qualified for the Olympics to represent Ghana. They’ve all won medals for Ghana at various tournaments.”
As mentioned above, Sarah set out with B For Bukom to achieve more than just honor Ghana’s great boxers, but to also acknowledge those whose guidance was instrumental in making the fulfillment of their dreams possible. “What I did was to create a table where I’ve written down the names of each of the boxers that are really celebrated, and I put by them the coaches that trained them and the clubs that they are from. So that when people see these boxers, they don’t just see them in isolation but they also see the individuals that were behind them, that helped with their successes that are often not recognized.”
Why did Sarah choose to tell the history of Ghanaian boxing in the form of a children’s chapter book? To her, the answer is elementary. “Because I wanted it to be something that educates young people right from the beginning. Because boxing is an important aspect of our heritage here. And I also want to encourage children to read. So by putting it in the form of reading, it’s just putting something that they love in an activity of reading,” Sarah says. “The book is designed to educate Ghanaian children beyond boxing because it gives you real life instances for you to see things that individuals have done, things that you can apply in your life even when you are not taking the part of boxing. It shows things of resilience, family ties, commitments, passion, and discipline. And pioneership, like all of these, are values that we can all benefit from.”
Currently serving as Executive Secretary of WBC Cares Africa, as well as the Ghana Boxing Federation where her duties include not only organizing grassroots movements but supervising the National Boxing Team coached by her father, Sarah also manages Theophilus Allotey, who is undefeated as a professional at 14-0 (11KOs), holds the WBO Africa bantamweight, Ghana National super-flyweight, UBO Continental super-flyweight, and WBO Global super-flyweight titles, and is ranked #10 worldwide in the 115-pound division.
Sarah additionally lays claim to the distinction of being Ghana’s first female matchmaker, “helping organize and support professional boxing events in a traditionally male-dominated space,” as she details her personal responsibility. She is understandably gratified by the reality that her prominent role in Ghanaian boxing “represents a growing shift toward greater female representation in the sport’s leadership structures” in addition to the fact that she has become “known for advocating for safer, more inclusive, and development-focused boxing conversations” and “emphasizes discipline, technical development, mental strength, and cultural significance over violence and sensationalism.”
There is an African proverb that says, “A single tree cannot
make a forest.” By helping nourish the cultural landscape of her beloved motherland
through boxing, reading, community engagement, and female empowerment, Sarah
Lotus Asare is doing more than her part to ensure that Ghana stands together
and stands strong as a formidable presence on the world stage. Just like the
proverbial forest—a welcoming environment for everyone to explore, learn about, and learn
from.
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| (Sarah and team celebrating a victory with Theophilus Allotey) |
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