Ace Nigerian Basketball reporter Oluwafemi Adefeso is set to host Africa’s first-ever Basketball Conference tagged the African Basketball Conversation. The digital conference is coming together of informed stakeholders; administrators, media practitioners, influencers, coaches, scouts, and more x-raying pertinent issues influencing basketball on the continent.
The first of the African Basketball Conversation series features 11 panelists from 9 different countries, 8 from Africa and Australia– Angola, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Uganda converging virtually on Thursday 7:30 pm Nigerian time and broadcasted Live on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
The convener, Oluwafemi Adefeso disclosed that the ABC will be moderated by former Kenyan Women’s National Basketball Team captain cum Television Personality, Silalei Shani while the panelists 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 Online Basketball Promotion outfit Bballnaija, Adedammy Adedotun headlining the list. 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 Assistant coach Liz Mills; Chief Editor Waukweli Rants, Karabani Waukweli and Senior Media Strategist Clouds Media Tanzania, Nicasius Agwanda completes the lineup.
Adefeso who formerly worked as a basketball content producer and reporter at Supersport and now-defunct Kwese Sports birth the now registered Balls Activating Literacy and Leadership in Africa (BALL Africa), a non Profit focused on developing Africa’s youth capacity in view of breeding a new community of sports professionals and social impact leaders through literacy and sports education during the COVID 19 lockdown in Nigeria. He said 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 Afrobaskets 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”.
Adefeso who was at work when the Nigerian D’Tigers won her sole continental crown in Tunisia 2015 and the first of consecutive Afrobasket Women’s triumphs for the D’Tigress in Bamako 2017 said 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 the official Hashtags to follow the event on social media are #AfricanBasketballConvo and #DigitalBasketballConference.
