Ask Eva Okyere where she feels most at home, press box, stadium, courtroom or disciplinary committee table, and she does not pause for even a second. “Stadium,” she says. No hesitation. Just that. It is the kind of answer that tells you everything about a woman who has spent her entire adult life sitting in rooms that were not built with her in mind, and thriving in every single one of them.
Eva is a Senior Associate and Head of Litigation at Ghartey and Ghartey, one of Ghana’s most respected law firms. She serves on the Appeals Committee of the Ghana Football Association. She has just been appointed to the Advisory Board of Central University’s Central Law School.
And before all of that, she was one of the most distinctive voices in Ghanaian sports broadcasting: the only woman at the Joy FM sports desk, a BBC-accredited journalist at the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations, and a fixture in TV3’s World Cup punditry for over a decade. Two careers. Both, she would tell you, built on exactly the same instincts.
It started at home. Eva grew up in a household where live sport was something you gathered around the television for, even at odd hours, even when it meant staying up far later than you should.
“I developed an interest in sports from a very early age,” she says. “So when the time came in journalism school to choose an area of specialisation, I opted for sports reporting. My motivation was that I would be doing something I was passionate about. I was going to get paid for doing something which was like a pastime for me. Work would never feel like a chore.”
She started in print, writing for Times Sports after journalism school, before transitioning into broadcast at Joy FM. The newsroom welcomed her warmly enough on the surface. She knew some colleagues from school. But the wider terrain was a different thing.
She is precise about it: “Sentiments were mixed. Remember, this was very much uncharted territory then. Naturally, there were those who were curious about why you were there amongst them and what you brought to the table. Others were quite territorial, while still others were patronising and even condescending. Some took a keen interest in my work, looking out for my perspectives on issues.”
None of that was unique to Joy FM. Research published by the Ghana Women Expert Project in 2024 found that only 14% of expert voices heard across six major Ghanaian media outlets were women. In sports departments specifically, 95.2% of media houses across West Africa have no female editors or managers at all. Eva was operating inside those numbers long before anyone put them in a report.
Her response was not to soften her edges or make herself smaller. She covered every beat the men covered. Women’s football, hockey and tennis became her niche, claimed not as consolation prizes but as her territory. The pressure to be consistently on top of her game was constant. So she stayed on top of it.
By 2002, when the World Cup landed in Japan and South Korea, Eva was already making her mark as a television pundit on TV3. Her analysis earned rave reviews. The relationship stuck, and TV3 kept her in their broadcast roster for years. The following year, she covered the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the USA, and in 2005 she was on the ground in Peru for the FIFA U-17 World Cup. She was building a reputation, quietly and steadily, long before the moment that would make everything else look modest by comparison.
And then, just months later, Germany happened.
Ghana’s first World Cup. The entire nation was barely holding itself together with excitement.
“For the first time in our history as a great football nation, Ghana had qualified for the World Cup and the entire nation was euphoric,” she says. “Then the competition commenced and the Black Stars defeated Czech Republic, with Asamoah Gyan scoring Ghana’s first World Cup goal. Against all odds, the Black Stars qualified from a group that had Italy, Czech Republic and the USA, transitioning from unknowns to giant killers.”
Covering it, whether from the press box or the studio, was not just a professional moment. It was personal.
That moment came in 2006, when the BBC selected her to be part of its team covering the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt. She still lights up describing it.
“Here I was in Egypt as an accredited BBC journalist, wearing my tag proudly and being the envy of most Ghanaian journalists as I moved around with the BBC crew, conducting interviews and hobnobbing with elite journalists. It was a rare privilege to have my stories aired internationally and to learn new things from journalists of international repute. It was one of the crowning moments of my career.”
She has never really left the World Cup. By 2022 in Qatar, which she names without blinking as her favourite host country, she had pitch-side seats for Ghana’s group matches.
“The excitement of being right there hits differently than watching it at home on television,” she says, and she means it in the way only someone who has done both fully can mean it.
She has also watched the women’s game transform from inside the industry. The difference between the women’s and men’s game on the pitch, she says, is no longer stark. The last two editions of the Women’s World Cup in 2019 and 2023 made that clear. But she is honest about what remains: commercial value, prize money, parity in how the game is funded and covered.
“The investment in women’s professional leagues all around the world is indicative of the growth and acceptability of the women’s game now,” she says, “from the days when it was a taboo for a girl to even dream of playing football.”
Globally, women’s sports media coverage reached 15% in 2024, up from roughly 4% a decade earlier. Progress is real. It is just not finished.
Here is the thing about Eva Okyere: law was always the original plan. Secondary school Eva had imagined herself in a courtroom long before she ever sat in a newsroom.
“Law was always on the radar,” she says. “Journalism overshadowed that dream unexpectedly, and I utilised every opportunity to make a mark in the field. But after about six years of active practice as a journalist, I knew the time was ripe to pursue the dream.”
She tried to carry both at once: Joy FM on one side, the University of Ghana law programme on the other. For a while, it held. Then the university insisted on full-time attendance only, and she had to choose. She chose the courtroom. She left the microphone. People who knew her voice from football coverage have never quite forgiven her for it.
“I have been asked many times wherever I go why I stopped doing sports broadcasting,” she says, “with most of these persons encouraging me to get back on radio and the silver screens.” She takes this as the compliment it is, and keeps going to court anyway.
She was called to the Bar in 2010 and joined Ghartey and Ghartey, the Ghana-based firm co-founded in 1994 by Mrs Efua Ghartey, the woman Eva names without missing a beat when asked who inspires her. In September 2024, Efua Ghartey became the first female president of the Ghana Bar Association in its 168-year history, winning with 54% of the vote.
Eva works under her leadership as Senior Associate and Head of Litigation, leading the firm’s most complex commercial cases. By 8 a.m. most mornings, she is already at the courthouse.
The two careers, she insists, are not as different as people assume. “Conferencing with clients, cross-examining witnesses, advancing arguments in open court, all warrant deploying journalism skills like interviewing, advocacy and storytelling,” she says. “For me, knowledge of the law makes you better at everything. The law is inherently multidisciplinary. That’s why lawyers are said to be learned.”
When she was called to the Bar, the Ghana Football Association did not need to wonder for long. She has since served on its Legal Committee, Disciplinary Committee and now the Appeals Committee, bringing the rare double fluency of someone who can read competition statutes and who has also sat in the press box watching the game those statutes govern.
Being a woman in law brings its own specific friction. In the courtroom, she has encountered a double standard that will be familiar to women in any advocacy role.
“As a female advocate, you are often accused of being emotional when you are passionate about your case,” she says. She does not raise her voice. She raises her standard. “When male lawyers are passionate about their cases, they are said to be great advocates.”
Her response is not to dim the passion. It is to hold the focus on her client’s interests and let the result do the talking.
Ask her what misconception she most wants to challenge publicly and she answers fast: the fallacy that women cannot lead. She does not dress it up. “As a society we have long laboured under this misconception,” she says, “and it only helps to reinforce and perpetuate the established patriarchy that has wreaked monstrous injustices on women and robbed us of invaluable human resources necessary for our progress. The examples of women with the competencies, knowhow and temperament to lead are now too glaring to ignore. It is time to make a clean break from the abhorrent stereotypes and practices that fuel this misconception.”
On why women must hold decision-making roles in football, not just commentary positions, she is equally direct.
“Policies are drawn up and fashioned out in the boardroom,” she says. “That is where leaders influence decisions and instigate change. Nobody can articulate the interests of women and influence policy to cause change better than women.” It is not a talking point. It is a position she has held from both sides of the table.
Her next ambition is FIFA itself. She wants to serve on one of its judicial bodies. Given that she has already sat on three GFA committees, filed from Egypt as a BBC journalist, covered World Cups on three continents, led litigation at one of Ghana’s most prominent law firms, and been appointed to the Central University Law School Advisory Board, it does not sound like wishful thinking. It sounds like a schedule.
For the young woman in Kumasi or Tamale who loves football and loves the idea of arguing a case but is being told to pick one path, Eva’s advice is not complicated.
“I would tell her to shut out the voices of the naysayers and follow her passion. Thankfully, she will have trailblazers to emulate, so she would know she needn’t sacrifice one dream for the other,” she says. “Earning a seat at the table is only the beginning. Holding down the seat at the table is what really counts.”
When she is not in court or on a GFA committee, Eva unwinds with music and dancing, an eclectic mix she keeps firmly to herself. She is a self-confessed night owl. She speaks and writes Akuapem Twi impeccably, a detail that tends to surprise people who have only ever encountered her in a professional setting. Her essential item on any working day is a coffee, piping hot, non-negotiable. She calls her journey so far, in a single word, intriguing. The word suits her.
And when you ask her again, just to be sure, where she feels most at home across everything she has built, she gives you the same answer she gave at the start.
Stadium.
Some instincts do not change.
About the Author
Bridget Mensah believes the right story, told well, can change everything. A communications strategist and gender equality advocate with 10+ years in Ghana’s media industry, she uses words as tools for accountability and amplification particularly for women. She leads communications for the Network of Women in Broadcasting (NOWIB), She is the Head of Corporate Affairs at Ghana Digital Centres Ltd (GDCL) [email protected]
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