PuraVida Sports

By Elias Makori

For over three decades, the US National Basketball Association (NBA) has been making spirited attempts to gain baseline access to the Kenyan basket.

Having scored richly in Central and South Africa, the NBA saw potential in the East African market to plant the NBA league’s development programmes in a region with vast, yet untapped potential.

The first major offensive into the Kenyan quarter was in 1993 when the NBA sent a delegation of legends to run coaching clinics and distribute equipment and merchandise.

Alvin Gentry, who coached six NBA teams in his stellar career, and Alex English, a veteran of the Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks, toured Kenya alongside five-time NBA All-Star and 1975 NBA Most Valuable Player Bob McAdoo, together with Washington Bullets’ legend and 1969 NBA MVP, Wes Unseld.

They led in basketball clinics for youths, principally at the Kakuma refugee camp, as part of an African tour that also featured NBA’s director of international programmes Michael Bantom, Congolese legend, shot-blocker Dikembe Mutombo, NBA commissioner David Stern, National Basketball Players Association executive vice president Charles Grantham and human rights activist-cum-author Richard Lapchick.

Ruto witnesses MoU signing in New York

But the major breakthrough for the NBA programme in Kenya came in 2023 when President William Ruto, while on State Visit to the USA, witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of Sports and the NBA that led to the opening of the NBA’s fifth African office in Nairobi to add to bases in Egypt, Senegal, South Africa and Nigeria.

The Basketball Africa League (BAL), now celebrating its fifth season, is one of NBA’s major Africa success stories with NBA Africa CEO, Clare Akamanzi, impressed by the organization’s financial traction on the continent thus far.

“In only five years, the BAL has become a fixture of the African creative economy, where a thrilling on-court product that features the best players on the continent blends with the music, fashion and cultural diversity that makes Africa so special,” she reflected in a commentary this week (also published elsewhere on puravidasports.africa).

“By bringing this world-class sport and entertainment product to more cities and countries, the BAL – and NBA Africa more broadly – continue to transform lives, communities and economies across the continent. Since 2021, the BAL has contributed more than $250 million to Africa’s GDP, a number that is expected to grow to $5.4 billion by 2034.  

“And nearly 37,000 jobs have been linked to the BAL playing games across the continent over the league’s first four seasons, a number that is expected to grow to more than 650,000 in the next decade.”

President Ruto was also convinced about the commercial viability of the NBA project in Nairobi. “Professional basketball promises to enhance talent commercialisation and transform the lives of our youth,” Ruto said while celebrating the NBA’s arrival in Nairobi as he hosted the then NBA Africa CEO Victor Williams, five-time NBA champion Ron Harper and Micheal Finley who was to become NBA’s first Kenya Country Lead.

Build 100 basketball courts

In the MoU signed in New York, the NBA committed to, inter alia, build 100 basketball courts in schools and communities across Kenya in the next decade in an effort to grow the sport. 

The NBA also committed to launch its commercial hub in Nairobi with the process thrown into motion during a visit to State House, Nairobi, by the NBA’s Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Mark Tatum and five-time NBA champion Derek Fisher.

“We see enormous potential for basketball, the NBA and the BAL in Kenya and across East Africa, which is why the NBA opened its fifth office on the continent in Nairobi in 2023, led by NBA Kenya Country Lead Michael Finley,” Akamanzi observed in her commentary. 

“Earlier this year, we launched a multiyear collaboration with Safaricom that is providing basketball development and financial literacy programming to more than 10,000 boys and girls in Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, and Kisumu, marking the NBA’s most expansive youth development programme in East Africa to date,” she added.  

“And last week, as part of our collaboration with Opportunity International, we unveiled a new basketball court in Nairobi that is part of our commitment to build 1,000 courts in Africa over the next decade, including 100 in Kenya.”

Ribbon-cutting ceremony

NBA Africa and Opportunity International, a global nonprofit organization that develops innovative programmes that use financial services, training and support to address some of the greatest challenges facing those living in poverty around the world, unveiled the new court at Loiswell Academy in Nairobi last month.  

The unveiling follows the launch of a new court at Highland School in Nyamata, Rwanda, last week and supports NBA Africa’s commitment to build 1,000 courts on the continent over the next decade.

The Nairobi court was unveiled at a ribbon cutting ceremony by NBA Kenya Country Operations Lead Finley, Opportunity International Board of Directors Member Ken Wathome, Opportunity International Executive Vice President, International Programmes and Capital Solutions Randy Kurtz, Loiswell Academy Founder and Director Lois Mbugua and former NBA player Hasheem Thabeet, which was followed by a Junior NBA/Jr. WNBA clinic for 100 boys and girls ages 16 years and under.

Junior NBA M-Pesa National Finals

Meanwhile, the Junior NBA M-Pesa National Finals concluded on April 11 this year at Mombasa’s Aga Khan Academy with St. John’s Korogocho and Olympic Junior School, both from Nairobi, crowned national champions in the boys’ and girls’ categories, respectively, capping a competitive journey that began with regional qualifiers in February.

These finals followed the Jr. NBA M-Pesa Elite Top 100 Camp, also held earlier in the week in Mombasa, bringing together 100 of the country’s most promising Under-16 players – 50 boys and 50 girls – selected from regional tournaments held in Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, and Kisumu, along with additional scouting across other regions. 

In the boys’ final, St. John’s Korogocho defeated hosts Aga Khan Academy Mombasa 30–23, with Moses Ochieng named the boys’ tournament’s Most Valuable Player while the girls’ final saw Olympic Junior School edge past Oasis Shelter Girls (Nyanza) 19–16, led by the girls MVP Brenda Akinyi.

Michael Finley natural Kenya Country Lead choice 

Finley was the natural choice to lead the NBA’s Nairobi operation given his previous experience in the country when he, among other projects, launched the Zuku Universities Basketball League through the Miles & Associates outfit.

For 15 years, Finley had the experience of basketball sponsorships and activations in Kenya involving various brands, including Sprite, Samsung and Zuku, and wanted to leverage on the country’s potential, having also worked through the country’s sports politics.

I caught up with Finley at the recent US-Kenya Creative Economy Forum 2025 at Nairobi’s Emara Ole-Sereni hotel, just to get a feel of how the NBA is finally gaining traction in Kenya, and started by asking him if he thought things are on track since the NBA set foot in Nairobi:

Michael Finley: “I worked and dealt with the politics in basketball and that’s why I said the first thing we need to do as the NBA is to get to the President (Ruto) and get him to endorse us, and to welcome us into the country so that we are not seen as ‘some guys over there doing their own things.’

Somehow, we managed to pull that off and he came to our offices in New York with the then Sports Cabinet Secretary Ababu Namwamba and we signed the MoU to do three things: elite talent development; help get facilities built; drive the game further into the school system.

The MoU gave us the cover and the support that we needed to get into the hearts and minds of Kenyans – the fact that the President has said he wants the NBA to be successful here.

We launched in November, 2023, and then I moved here physically in January, 2024, and one of the first things that we did was sign a partnership with Safaricom.

As Kenya moves to the CBC (Competence Based Curriculum), for the first time we have been able to take basketball to the under-16 category, and the partnership with Safaricom is focused on the under-16s.

Before that, we built two basketball courts at the Kenya Academy of Sport, and that’s the beginning of the elite programme that we promised.

We also brought in a partnership with the French Development Bank (AFD) and the Red Cross where we are training coaches and youths where we have reached several thousand people.

The Safaricom programme in the first year reached 15,000 kids through our road show, and we ran the largest development programme ever done in Kenya – we did four tournaments in four regions and we had over 500 youth, under-16, in each of these regions. 

From these 2,000, we selected the top 100 and held a “top 100” camp in Mombasa.

We have also taken two of Kenyan girls to the “Basketball Without Borders” programme and, together with the US embassy, we helped get Madina (Okot) get an opportunity of a lifetime (at Mississippi State University).

Now, our next push is to build a property in the universities space, and we shall do something in September 19-20 at Garden City Mall where we will be hosting university teams for a two-day cup.

Also, one of the first things we did was sign a partnership with NTV to air our (NBA League) games and now we are pushing to get more partners, build more courts and grow the game in the country.

We have had a lot of support from the ministries of Education and Sport and that’s why we have been able to make progress so quickly.”

Question: Nairobi City Thunder has come up very well lately, featuring in the BAL. Have you made in-roads into the Kenyan club space?

Michael Finley: “Thanks for that question… Because the Thunder have made such progress in the last couple of years, we lobbied to bring the “Road to BAL” tournament here in Nairobi which we hosted at Kasarani.

This really highlighted the opportunity that exists in the club space where all the clubs can aspire to get to the BAL. The Thunder have already done a lot of the work and we have a platform that they have been striving for. 

What their performance has done for the game, I don’t think we will be able to measure, because now, if I’m a young Kenyan kid and I love basketball, or I’m thinking about it, or I’ve been watching Thunder on TV, I’ll want to play in the BAL…

And now you’ll see a lot of kids aspire to be on that stage, and that’s our contribution, and the interest is growing from strength to strength.”

Question: Are you also looking at the scholarship programmes in the US, especially considering that NBA players get drafted from the universities?

Michael Finley: “What we do is help find the talent and help get them into different places where they can be discovered and developed.

We have the “Basketball Without Borders” programme (invite-only NBA camp for elite players), and we have the regional camps that we do with FIBA (International Basketball Federation) and that’s where we take the top talent from Kenya.

At these camps, people come from everywhere to scout and that’s the biggest scout in that direction. What we did getting the (US) Embassy to know about Madina is also one of the ways of offering a platform for talent that we do.

We are going to do everything we can to identify the talent and get them into a place where they can be seen and discovered, and we are gonna do all we can to develop that talent, whether it means getting them to a certain school or into one of our camps so that one day they can be discovered and get an opportunity to play on different platforms.

Question: Are you working directly with NBA teams in this Kenyan talent identification?

Michael Finley: The NBA teams do their own (scouting) work on the ground, sometimes, but we don’t have a lot of them that are actively engaging in Africa, or in Kenya in Particular.

We don’t do anything in the club space as our philosophy is ‘rising tide raises all ships’ and so we do the things that I have explained. 

We can’t do everything and so we do the key elements and implement some key pillars that we think will lift the game overall.”

Question: Are you happy with the last one-and-a-half years and what is your projection for the next one-and-a-half years? Is the NBA office in Kenya offering a good return on investment?

Michael Finley: “It can always be better, but I’m happy with our progress after all the things that I’ve explained. People know that we are here and there is a lot of excitement.

We’ve got a lot of partners that have signed with us and we have others that are coming on board. We want to be a safe place for Kenyan brands. They need platforms where they can say ‘we go there and we see results’ and this will open things up for other organisations and companies to do things in sport.

The next one-and-a-half years is really to put up more courts. 

One of my big goals is to bring the BWB (Basketball Without Borders) here, and we are having active conversations about that – I think it will be a real success here in Kenya.

We want to bring the “Road to BAL” back to Kenya, and we need Thunder to continue with their trajectory. 

If Thunder can qualify each year for the BAL, it will do wonders for basketball and for the NBA.

It takes time (to get a return on investment), and we are in the investment phase now, but we are making progress that the leadership is happy about and we feel we are moving in the right direction.

We’ve got to do more and we have a lot to do, but, generally, we are happy with the first year and half. (With additional reporting from NBA Africa)

•  elias.makori@ymail.com