Upper West Region are all fired up for this weekend’s Zone 3 Airtel Rising Stars competition which is being hosted at the Wa Sports Stadium.

Local media in Wa are adverting the competition with a Wa-centric attitude saying “the time has come for Upper West to also qualify for the Airtel Rising Stars finals. Brong Ahafo has always qualified for the finals."

Sule Adam, a popular sports journalist in the Upper West regional capital, added: "The people of Wa should come out in their numbers to push the Upper West kids. This is the way our football can succeed. This is the way our children can also be seen by the rest of the country."

Aside doing the region proud, the Regional Football Association have added a reason to ensure the organization is flawless.

“You know Kwesi Nyantakyi, the President of the Ghana Football Association is from Wa. We have to do him proud by making sure that this competition which is close to his heart has good patronage here in Wa. We are very proud of the GFA president and we want him to be proud of us too,” said Adolf Abubakar Kassim, the chairman of the Regional Juvenile Committee (RJC) of the Upper West Region.

Meanwhile, Brong Ahafo has a stated agenda of thwarting the plans of the hosts. Their team has been in camp for weeks and feels sharp enough to wrestle qualification for the national finals which will be hosted in Sunyani.

“We are the hosts of the national finals. We are of course confident that if we win in Wa, our region can actually become the national champions of this year’s Airtel Rising Stars,” said Amponsah Agyemang, the Brong Ahafo Region’s juvenile committee chairman.

Already Western Region’s Boys and Girls team have qualified for the national finals. Eastern Region’s Boy’s team and the Ashanti Region’s female team have also booked their tickets to the finals of what is Ghana’s most authentic football talent competition, the Airtel Rising Stars.

After Wa, Airtel Rising Stars moves to Tamale, which will feature the Upper East and Northern Regions. The train heads down south to Denu in the Volta Region for the competition between the Voltarians and Greater Accra Region.

The winners of all five zones then head to Sunyani for the national finals scheduled to take place on the 29 and 30 of August.

Airtel Rising Stars is an award-winning collaborative effort between the Ghana Football Association and African Telecommunication giant, Airtel. It aims at tapping into the potential of all young talented footballers in the country and setting them on the path of greatness.