Summarize

All is set for the first edition of the African Basketball Conversation, a digital conference on the development of professional basketball in Africa. The conference, put together by Oluwafemi Adefeso, is the coming together of informed stakeholders; administrators, media practitioners, influencers, coaches, scouts and more discussing pertinent issues around basketball on the continent. 

The first of the African Basketball Conversation series features 11 panelists from 9 different countries - Australia,  Angola, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda converging virtually on Thursday 7:30pm Nigerian time.

The event will streamed live on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

The conference will be moderated by former Kenyan Women’s national Basketball Team captain cum Television Personality, Silalei Shani while the panels will be led by former Olympian and 3 time Afrobasket Champion with Angola, Victor Muzadi; Toronto Raptors Scout, Abel Nson; Giants of Africa Country Coordinator, Herve Bassong; President Cameroon Regional Basketball league Yvels Tsala and Founder of Nigeria’s number one digital basketball platform BballNaija, Adedamilola Adedotun.

Others include Uganda national Basketball Team manager, Albert Ahabwe; Former FIBA Africa Media and Founder Ivoire Basket, Regis Thalmas; Ex Zambia and Cameroon men’s national team`s Assistant Head Coach Liz Mills; Chief Editor Waukweli Rants, Karabani Waukweli and Senior Media Strategist Clouds Media Tanzania, Nicasius Agwanda completes the lineup.

According to Adefeso,the digital conference is one of the sports development programs on the itinerary of the organization and his experiences covering basketball on the continent helped him start with Basketball. 

“Basketball in Africa has come of age, when I started reporting basketball almost a decade ago, I was like a voice in the wilderness in Nigeria reporting the sports on national TV. I recall when I attended the FIBA Africa Journalist Course in 2013 in Cote d’Ivoire, we were just a handful of reporters from across the continent present. The culmination of all my experiences traversing the continent covering multiple Afrobasket tournaments while juxtaposing it with my experience covering about 10 NBA games across Los Angeles, Chicago and Indiana in 2018 birthed the need for a conversation about uplifting Basketball in Africa”.

He believes that the African Basketball Conversation will be a major turning point for Basketball on the continent because he hopes to attract all stakeholders from far and wide, creating a concentration and a major force where high level discussion are heard and solutions predicated.

“If we really want basketball to be on the same table of conversation with football in Africa we need to unite the scarce resources we have across the continent, build one platform and one voice where we can all stand and together amplify our voices on the needs and plan action steps to get to where we want”. 

“A good foundation has been laid by the tremendous work of NBA Africa, Giant of Africa, Seed Project and others are doing, ours is to build on it and take it to another level”

The event will be open for audience participation and and the official Hashtags to follow the event on social media are #AfricanBasketballConvo and #DigitalBasketballConference.



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