Ghanaian coach James Kwesi Appiah has written many chapters in African football, but few are as dramatic as the one unfolding with Sudan as they prepare to play in the semi-finals of the African Nations Championship (CHAN) against Madagascar Tuesday.
Against the backdrop of a brutal civil war that has displaced more than 12 million people and left entire cities in ruins, the 64-year-old has turned Sudan’s CHAN team and the main senior national team, the Falcons of Jediane, into one of the continent’s most compelling stories.
Appiah’s Sudan are not only semi-finalists at the 2024 CHAN, they have also qualified for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco ahead of his own Ghana.
They also sit one point adrift of leaders DR Congo in their 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying group that includes continental giants Senegal.
For a nation whose domestic league is suspended, whose players live as nomads, and whose home fixtures are staged in Libya or South Sudan, it borders on the miraculous.
For Appiah, this is not the first time he has turned adversity into triumph. As a player, he was part of Ghana’s 1982 Africa Cup of Nations winning squad in Libya, claiming the Black Stars’ fourth continental title.
As a coach, he became the first black African to lead Ghana to a FIFA World Cup in 2014, steering them to Brazil. He was also assistant coach in 2010 when Ghana reached the World Cup quarter-finals — still Africa’s best showing alongside Cameroon (1990), Senegal (2002) and Morocco (2022) even though Morocco surpassed this achievement by playing in the semi-final of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
