NBA AFRICA AND AGENCE FRANÇAISE DE DÉVELOPPEMENT LAUNCH YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM IN KENYA

Basketball Experience is a youth development program that will feature weekly basketball and life-skills sessions to educate Kenyan youth about the importance of physical and mental health and wellbeing.  

The initiative builds on NBA Africa and AFD’s existing Basketball Experience programming in greater Casablanca, Morocco and Lagos, Nigeria, and aims to use basketball as a platform to promote social inclusion and inspire secondary school children as change makers in their local communities.  

To celebrate the announcement, NBA Africa and AFD today unveiled two refurbished outdoor basketball courts at Kenya Academy of Sports (KAS) in Nairobi and hosted a basketball clinic for 150 boys and girls ages 16 and under.  The refurbished courts are expected to benefit more than a thousand boys and girls from the surrounding communities. 

The unveiling was attended by French Ambassador to Kenya Arnaud Suquet, AFD Kenya Country Director Bertrand Willocquet, NBA Kenya Senior Director and Country Operations Lead Michael Finley and NBA Africa Director of Basketball Operations Kita Matungulu. 

• “At AFD, we are team players. We strongly believe that greater impacts can be reached when we work together and connect,” said Willocquet.  “The NBA was our first partner in the field of sport for development. Together, we have launched the Jr. NBA & AFD Basketball Experience program that seeks to promote youth empowerment and improve access to sport for all.” 

• “The launch of Jr. NBA & AFD Basketball Experience reflects our commitment to making basketball more accessible to Kenyan youth and teaching them about the importance of a healthy, active lifestyle,” said Finley.  “Our selection of the KAS as the venue also speaks to our commitment to developing elite talent in Kenya.  We thank AFD for sharing that commitment and look forward to positively impacting the boys and girls who participate in this program in the months and years to come.”

The Jr. NBA, the league’s global youth basketball participation program for boys and girls, teaches the fundamental skills as well as the core values of the game at the grassroots level in an effort to help grow and improve the youth basketball experience for players, coaches and parents.  Last year, Jr. NBA programming directly reached more than 170,000 youth across Africa.

About NBA Africa

NBA Africa is an affiliate of the National Basketball Association (NBA), a global sports and media organization with the mission to inspire and connect people everywhere through the power of basketball.  NBA Africa conducts the league’s business in Africa, including the Basketball Africa League (BAL), and has opened subsidiary offices in Cairo, Egypt; Dakar, Senegal; Lagos, Nigeria; and Nairobi, Kenya.  The league’s efforts on the continent have focused on increasing access to basketball and the NBA through youth and elite development, social responsibility, media distribution, corporate partnerships, NBA Africa Games, an NBA Store, the BAL, and more.  

NBA games and programming are available in all 54 African countries, and the NBA has hosted three sold-out exhibition games on the continent since 2015.  The BAL, a partnership between the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and NBA Africa, is a professional league featuring 12 club teams from across Africa that concluded its fourth season in June 2024.  Fans can follow @NBA_Africa and @theBAL on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

About AFD

Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Group finances, supports and accelerates the transitions necessary for a more just and resilient world. It thus contributes to implementing France’s policy on sustainable development and international solidarity. It is with and for communities that we build, with our partners, solutions in more than 160 countries, as well as in 11 French overseas departments and territories.

Our objective: to reconcile economic development with the preservation of common goods: the climate, biodiversity, peace, gender equality, education and health. Our teams are involved in more than 3,600 projects in the field, which are part of the commitment of France and the French people to fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals. For a world in common.

AFD strongly believes in the power of sport as a lever to achieve the sustainable development goals. Since the launch of its sport for development strategy in 2019, AFD has invested more than €130 million in over 160 projects that use sport as a tool to promote access to education, gender equality, youth empowerment, health and social cohesion. In Kenya, we have already supported 12 other projects implemented by 8 civil society organizations who seek to offer new opportunities to youth each day through sport. 

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