Follow Us on Google
Basketball is being positioned as a route to opportunity for young African talent, especially women and girls, after the Basketball Africa League (BAL) took its message to Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) WKND 2026 in Lagos.
The league took part in the 5-8 November event as part of its collaboration with Afreximbank. Together with partners Visit Rwanda and Rwanda Air, it also staged a merchandise display for attendees.
BAL Ambassador and ESPN analyst Chiney Ogwumike led a masterclass titled “Crowning Our Future Champions,” drawing on the work of her foundation, Queens of the Continent. The session looked at how basketball can open doors for young women and girls through access to facilities, community support and confidence-building.
“If talent has no gender, opportunity shouldn’t either. When girls have a court to play on, a community behind them and the confidence to believe in themselves, they can go as far as their talent takes them,” Ogwumike said.
On 6 November, the BAL and Queens of the Continent hosted the BAL4HER Showcase, a one-day 3×3 tournament featuring the top 20 participants from the BAL4HER Elevate Camp held in Lagos earlier this year. It gave the players a platform to show their talent and connect with the wider creative and sports industries at CANEX.
Earlier that day, BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall joined a high-level panel, “Creating Sustainable Pathways to Success for Global African Sporting Talent,” where stakeholders discussed the investment, collaboration and structures needed to support athletes from grassroots to professional level.
“Talent has never been Africa’s problem. The challenge is building the infrastructure, competition and structures around that talent, so that leaving the continent is a choice rather than the only route to the highest levels,” Fall said. “Investment in a court should connect to programming, and programming to coaching and competition. That is how a court becomes a pathway and not just a facility.”
The BAL says it will keep investing in the basketball ecosystem, including developing and renovating courts where professional and recreational players can train and grow.
As part of this, the league will unveil its second BAL4HER community court next month in Owerri, Nigeria, the homeland of Ogwumike’s parents, in collaboration with Qatar Foundation and Queens of the Continent. The project will pair access to facilities with community programming and local partnerships to create more opportunities for women and girls in the game.
