As part of the Basketball Experience program intended for youth development, Nba Africa and the French Development Agency (Afd) yesterday inaugurated a basketball court in Guédiawaye Hamo, in the locality of Ndiarème Limamoulaye .
The ceremony was marked by the presence of the director of Afd Senegal, Mihoub Mezouaghi, the president of the Basketball Africa League (Bal), Amadou Gallo Fall, the director of basketball operations of the Nba Africa, Kita Matungulu, but also from former NBA player and 2015 Afrobasket champion, Olumide Oyedeji.
An opportunity for the president of the Ball to welcome such an initiative.
“It’s a great pleasure to be back in this community. In 2019, we were here with a strong delegation from the NBA including Adam Silver, for the Basket Africa Camp. We are happy to continue to serve these young people, our primary motivation. I would like to magnify this partnership with the Afd. It is an opportunity, in line with partners who continue to demonstrate their commitment to inspiring African youth through basketball values. Facilities of this type provide this accessibility,” said Mr. Fall. Who, towards the mayor, urges better exploitation.
“I congratulate the mayor of Ndiarème Limamoulaye. This is just the beginning. We will need to put in place a program with supervisors to support this next generation on which the future of Africa depends. Youth will remain our primary target. What we are very proud of, after a few decades on the continent, are the partnerships that we have been able to seal with the NBA to give girls and boys access to these facilities. To identify these talents, we have Seed Academy which will be responsible for spreading this vision in several locations in Senegal. This journey from the base to the top culminated in the Ball,” he emphasizes.
Happy with the partnership with Afd, Kita Matungulu believes that “the land represents a unique opportunity. This field is one of a thousand others that the NBA will build in Africa.
The director of Afd in Senegal noted that “we can educate through sport, share values, shape behaviors. We are all parents of children, and that’s what we try to do. I learned about this program when it was launched four years ago, in Morocco. Looking back, I think all this will offer young people a lot of opportunities, to learn and improve, but to have fun. This program will also develop in Kenya. This journey shows that the players are aware of the potential of sport, of the economics of sport. This means that the continent is capable of attracting investors and we must see the Afd group as an investor -150 million euros in the continent. And that’s the start of the curve. In the next 5, 10 years, we will see the emergence of a sports economy.”
Along the same lines, the mayor of Ndiarème Limamoulaye, Woré Guèye, who had at his side the representatives of the Minister of Sports and those of Education, said that “it is a project which embodies education through the sport. This land is not only a play space, but a space for development.”
The program, launched in 2021 in Nigeria, then in Kenya and Morocco, which has reached nearly 90,000 boys and girls aged 12 to 17 and 460 coaches, uses basketball as a platform to promote social inclusion and youth , empowering children in primary and secondary schools.
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