Didier Drogba foundation to invest $3.8 million in Ivory Coast hospitals

Didier Drogba formerly of Chelsea holds the UEFA Champions League trophy after his team’s final soccer match against Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena in Munich, May 19, 2012. PHOTO/Dylan Martinez/Reuters

A foundation founded by Didier Drogba, the Ivory Coast soccer player, will invest US$3.8 million building hospitals in the west African nation.

The project, the foundation’s biggest since it started in 2007, will lead the construction of at least five health centers for women and children in Yamoussoukro, the capital, and the cities of Abidjan, San Pedro, Man and Korhogo, Guy Roland Tanoh, the general secretary of the Didier Drogba Foundation, said in a phone interview yesterday.

The money, 80 percent of which has already been raised, will come from charity galas organized in London.

Drogba, 35, won the European Champions League with Chelsea in 2012 and currently plays for Turkish club Galatasaray. He has served as the captain of Ivory Coast’s national soccer team, known as the elephants.

The first hospital will open in Attecoube in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s most populous city and commercial capital, Tanoh said. Work started in June and will last an estimated 6 to 8 months, he said. The second health center will be built in capital Yamoussoukro, Tanoh said.

Ivorian architect Pierre Fakhoury, known for having designed the Yamoussoukro basilica, the largest Christian Church in the world, has been chosen to construct the hospitals, Tanoh said. -(Bloomberg Businessweek)