Walk into an old stadium in Nairobi on a weekday afternoon and you might find teenagers running drills as if their families’ futures depend on it. Basketball in Africa is no longer a side hobby played on cracked concrete. It is turning into a real industry, with salaries, sponsors and television deals that reach well beyond the continent. The NBA sits at the centre of that shift, and what it means for players, fans and investors is worth a closer look.
A Decade of Groundwork Before the Spotlight
The NBA did not arrive in Africa overnight. The league opened its first African office in Johannesburg in 2010, then staged sold-out exhibition games in Johannesburg and Pretoria in 2015, 2017 and 2018. Its Basketball Without Borders camps began back in 2003, and by 2020 the programme had steered ten African-developed players toward the draft.
The results are hard to miss. A record-tying 14 African players were on NBA opening-night rosters for the 2020-21 season, and Cameroon’s Joel Embiid was among the biggest names. The New York Times has reported that roughly one in ten NBA players is now a first- or second-generation African. African basketball players are not a novelty in the league anymore. They are part of its identity.
The Basketball Africa League Takes the Stage
The biggest step came in May 2021, when the Basketball Africa League (BAL), a joint venture between the NBA and FIBA, crowned its first champion. Egypt’s Zamalek beat Tunisia’s US Monastir 76-63 in Kigali. Covid-19 had forced organisers to scrap the original plan for Dakar and squeeze twelve teams into a single bubble at Kigali Arena, with more than 500 people from 52 nationalities moving through strict testing.
African Business reported that games reached more than a billion viewers worldwide. Canal+ and ESPN covered Africa, Voice of America handled radio, and Tencent streamed the games in China. The NBA brought match-official training and commercial muscle too. Courtside seats drew presidents Kagame and Macron, and rapper J. Cole suited up for the Rwanda Patriots.
That is how NBA in Africa looks in practice. It is a proper league, with African clubs, African crowds and a half-time show that borrows from the American playbook but features local stars.
Nairobi City Thunder: A Small Club With Big Dreams
The best way to understand the change is to look at one team. The Christian Science Monitor tells the story of the Nairobi City Thunder, a side from the low-income neighbourhood of Shauri Moyo. For years the Thunder were amateurs who practised twice a week at a YMCA court, held other jobs and struggled to cover travel costs.
In 2023, sports management firm Twende Sports bought the club. Players got competitive salaries and health insurance, a stricter coaching staff arrived, and some of Kenya’s best talent came home from abroad. The payoff came in December 2024, when the Thunder beat Uganda’s City Oilers to become the first Kenyan team to reach the BAL.
Then there is Wade Deng, a 17-year-old South Sudanese refugee in the club’s youth system. His mother and five siblings live in a crowded camp hundreds of miles away, and he trains twice a day with one goal: to get them out. Two of his teammates from the Deementor youth squad have already been called up to the senior team. Stories like his explain why this is about more than sport. For many young people, it is about a way out.
From Dakar to the Draft: Building Talent at Home
Basketball development in Africa is moving beyond the occasional lucky scout discovery. Since 2018, the NBA Academy Africa in Senegal has trained the continent’s top prospects in one place, instead of waiting for them to be spotted on a neighbourhood court. The NBA has also announced plans to build 1,000 new courts across the continent. Courts matter because talent cannot grow without places to play.
Coach Deng Garang, who works with the Deementor squad, says basketball gives his players somewhere to put their energy and keeps them away from drugs and crime. He also connects as many of them as he can with school scholarships. This is the less glamorous side of the story: coaches, courts and classrooms matter as much as the highlight reels.
Money Follows the Ball
Investors have noticed. NBA Africa was set up as its own entity and partly sold to African investors, including a group led by Babatunde Folawiyo and Helios Fairfax Partners. Barack Obama joined as a strategic partner and minority investor. Early BAL sponsors included Flutterwave, New Fortress Energy and the Rwanda Development Board.
A PwC survey cited by African Business expected the continent’s sports industry to grow 6.6% over the three to five years after 2020. Respondents ranked basketball’s revenue potential second only to football. That is the heart of African sports investment: young, connected audiences with growing leisure spending and smartphones in their pockets.
Profit has not arrived yet, though. Both NBA Africa and Twende are still playing the long game, according to the Monitor. Sandra Kimokoti of Twende hopes the Thunder’s example will encourage others to invest in the wider basketball ecosystem, so that it becomes a Kenyan basketball story and not only a Thunder story.
The Game Is Changing, but the Work Is Not Done
Nigeria’s national team showed in July 2021 what a decade of development can do, beating the United States 90-87 in a pre-Olympic exhibition. It was the first time an African side had ever beaten the Americans. NBA Africa’s Victor Williams was careful to call it part of an evolution, not a one-off miracle.
Real challenges remain. Facilities are scarce in many countries, pay and professional structures are uneven, and football will keep its crown for a long time. Whether this growth spreads beyond a handful of cities depends on whether local investors, schools and federations build on what the NBA has started.
Still, the direction is clear. A teenager in Nairobi, Kigali or Lagos can now look at a basketball and see a career, not just a game. If the courts get built and the investment keeps coming, the next Embiid may be learning the game within walking distance of home.
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