Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan celebrates after winning the women’s 100m hurdles in Zurich, Switzerland, September 8, 2022
Fabrice COFFRINI
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Africa offers a huge underdeveloped market for global sport, with thousands of athletes ready to join international ranks if only big investments were made, industry leaders and stars say.
But more government-private sector partnerships are needed to boost African sport and bring young players into the top leagues of soccer, basketball and even American football, participants at a business forum said on Monday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver hailed Africa as brimming with sporting potential, noting that more than 10 percent of players in the world’s premier basketball league were born in African countries or have African parents.
“More and more NBA and WNBA players are being discovered, nurtured, developed and then able to play at the highest level,” he said of the region’s younger generations and the benefits of expanding youth training programs there.
Silver also stressed that sport must be seen as economically viable in Africa to attract the “literally billions in investment that is needed”.
“To convince … great business people to invest in infrastructure, we have to show that it’s a real business – that there’s a real return over time,” he said.
The forum included former NBA stars such as Congolese-American Dikembe Mutombo, WNBA sensation Chiney Ogwumike, who is of Nigerian descent, and current Toronto Raptors power forward Pascal Siakam, a Cameroonian who caught the attention of Boy Scouts at a camp of Basketball Without Borders in South Africa.
American football has also increased its presence. More than 100 current NFL players are African, according to Osi Umenyiora, a Super Bowl champion who is leading an NFL initiative to expand the pipeline of new talent from countries like Ghana and Nigeria.
“From a business perspective, it would actually make sense for me to do business in Africa now,” Umenyoora told the audience, adding that the NFL recently opened new player camps in Africa.
Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors in the fourth quarter against the Philadelphia 76ers during game five of the Eastern Conference first round at the Wells Fargo Center on April 25, 2022 in Philadelphia
Tim Nwachukwu
The discussion comes in tandem with the launch of the new African Super League, which has big prize money in store for the 24 football clubs that qualify for next year’s inaugural edition.
Confederation of African Football President Patrice Motsepe said that while Africa’s connection to European and American leagues is “important”, the Super League will “attract billions of dollars in football in Africa to pay for the brightest and most talented young Africans and to keep them on the continent.”
The youngest gold medalist in the 100m hurdles, Tobi Amusan, who became Nigeria’s first world track and field champion in July, warned that Africa’s lack of infrastructure, including training facilities, could encourage an athlete brain drain.
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go to other places,” Amusan, who lives in Texas, told AFP.
“But when the government and the private sector let things like this happen in Africa, we keep our feet on the ground in our countries and we don’t just let them migrate to other countries.”
The head of the region’s new basketball premier league also spoke of the delicate balance between international player recruitment and local sporting development.
“Africa needs to stop being an exporter all the time,” said Amadou Fall, president of the Basketball Africa League, which launched last year.
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