Visionary, rigorous, uncompromising: the president of the Lebanese basketball federation transformed an institution into a crisis into a regional model. Portrait of an inflexible builder, re -elected in 2024 for a third term and more determined than ever to register Lebanon on the world basketball card.
When Akram Halabi is elected at the head of the Lebanese basketball federation in 2018, no one still suspects that Lebanon is preparing to cross one of the worst decades in its contemporary history.
A president in the storm
Akram Halabi did not imagine that the mandate he started going to turn into a crisis marathon. In October 2019, an unprecedented economic crisis hits Lebanon. The country plunges into chaos. The financial debacle will succeed the Pandemic of Covid-19, the explosion of the port of Beirut in 2020, the Gaza War at the end of 2023, then the climbing between Israel and Hezbollah. No matter how much we look, we find it difficult to conjunct the more unfavorable. And yet … against all odds, he has, each time, found the parades, the solutions, the good decisions.
The reconstruction site
Building on his experience in business, he quickly sets up a financial recovery system to prevent Lebanese basketball from sinking. When he inherits the post, the federation is suffocated by debts, inherited from poor management, especially during the organization of the Asian Cup. He expects to reimburse them, restructuring, professionalized, sanitizes. Visionary, pointed in the smallest detail, he won the largest broadcasting contract in the history of Lebanese sport, multiplies academies for coaches and referees, and lays the foundations of a new federal seat in Jounieh, whose first stone has already been laid.
Results on all terrains
Lebanon becomes vice-champion of Asia in 2022, qualified for the FIBA 2023 World Cup and won the Arab Cup in Dubai with a male selection at the top of its art. Under its leadership, female selections shine in zone 1, historic clubs (Riyadi, wisdom) find their luster of yesteryear, and young people – U10, U14, U14 – are experiencing an unprecedented boom. Training sessions are organized regularly for referees and coaches, in a dynamic of global structuring of Lebanese basketball.
-A man, a vision
And, above all, Akram Halabi is elected vice-president of the Asian Federation. A major regional recognition for those who now intend to conquer the continent, provided you target high: “The qualification for the Asian Cup is not an end in itself. The objective is the title, “he said, calling for solid preparations, training camps abroad and a targeted recruitment of naturalized players.
Unanimously re -elected last December, he promises to continue the work. He advocates collective leadership, but remains the guarantor of a clear guideline: preserving the neutrality of sport, resisting political interference and refusing the compromises that damage.
Against interference, for ethics
He does not hesitate to denounce the partisan maneuvers, the power games, the attempts at instrumentalization that plague Lebanese sport. Without chewing his words, he castigates the illegal interventions of certain officials of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and accuses parties of wanting to regain control of the sports authorities for electoral purposes.
But at 57, the man does not allow himself to be intimidated. “We have done a lot, but the best is yet to come.” The sentence may seem agreed. But with him, she sounds like a promise. And a threat. That of a president who, even in the storm, takes the course.
In a country where presidents change faster than the seasons, Akram Halabi embodies stability and continuity. Calm, determined, honest. And more than ever turned to the future.
In a Lebanon often tossed between passions and divisions, Akram Halabi succeeded in uniting a whole people … around an orange balloon.
