UplayNext
Transforming Athlete Discovery and Recruitment in Africa
UplayNext is a groundbreaking Ghanaian sports-tech platform developed in partnership with Digiits to revolutionize how student-athletes are discovered, developed, and recruited across Africa. With a focus on verified data, seamless scouting workflows, and institutional infrastructure, UplayNext connects talented African athletes to global opportunities, empowering a new generation of sports professionals. The platform brings together athletes, colleges, scouts, and national sports institutions under one robust digital ecosystem—redefining the future of athlete development and sports governance on the continent.
Task
Building a Unified, Multi-Stakeholder Sports-Tech Ecosystem Digiits was engaged to design and develop a full-stack digital solution that could: Empower student-athletes to take ownership of their development and visibility through verified digital profiles. Offer scouts and college recruiters powerful tools to discover, analyze, and engage with top talent. Provide ministries and sports authorities with an enterprise-grade ERP to manage national programs, tournament data, and policy planning. Deliver a platform that is accessible, scalable, and trusted across all tiers of the sports ecosystem.
Despite Africa’s abundance of raw athletic talent, thousands of student-athletes remain invisible to international scouts and collegiate programs. Traditional scouting methods are fragmented, informal, and often lack credibility. Governments and institutions invest millions in scholarships and development programs, yet they operate without the support of a unified digital system to manage, track, or evaluate athletes effectively.
The absence of a structured, tech-enabled talent pipeline has stunted the careers of countless promising athletes. Schools, clubs, and ministries lack the tools to document, verify, and showcase athlete performance—resulting in missed opportunities, inefficient policymaking, and underinvestment in grassroots sports development.
Digiits began the project with a deep research and discovery process. This involved interviews with athletes, sports officials, coaches, and recruiters, as well as audits of existing tools and processes. The findings reinforced the need for a seamless, end-to-end digital solution that could unify every touchpoint in an athlete’s journey—from grassroots play to global recruitment.
The design team focused on usability and intuitiveness, particularly for student-athletes. Clean interfaces, social-style profile experiences, and multimedia integration allowed athletes to tell their stories through stats, video highlights, and verified achievements. Meanwhile, college dashboards and scout CRMs were designed for powerful search, filtering, analytics, and recruitment workflow management.
For the Ministry ERP, Digiits built an advanced backend system with real-time tournament tracking, institution-level reporting, and national data visualizations. The infrastructure was designed to align with national sports policies and offer granular insights to support evidence-based decision-making.
The development process followed agile principles, with multiple MVP tracks running in parallel to accelerate delivery of the athlete app, college portal, and ERP system. Real-time tournament data capture, mobile-first responsiveness, and performance benchmarking were integrated to ensure platform adoption at scale.
At the core is the Athlete App & Portal, where student-athletes create verified digital profiles, upload video highlights, track match statistics, and build a shareable athletic résumé. With AI-powered discovery tools, athletes are matched with colleges based on eligibility, performance metrics, and preferences.
Colleges and scouts access a dedicated CRM dashboard that allows them to discover athletes using advanced filters—by age, sport, school, performance, and more. Tools for engagement, video reviews, shortlist management, and real-time tournament tracking make the recruitment process seamless and data-driven.
At the institutional level, the Ministry ERP System equips sports ministries, associations, and schools with a centralized dashboard to manage tournaments, athlete data, development programs, and national performance strategies. This ensures accountability, transparency, and alignment with long-term talent development goals.
All three layers are integrated, mobile-accessible, and built to scale across multiple sports and regions.
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