Basketball in Africa

The quest for the next generation of female Basketball stars gets under way in Lagos with a three day camp at the Rowe Park complex under the auspices of Hope4girlsAfrica, the non-profit organization of former Nigeria Basketball International, Mobolaji Akiode.

This is third year and will include 60 girls drawn from three countries, Ghana, Benin Republic and Nigeria all aged under 17.
Mobolaji tells SuperSport.com that "Our goal has always been to support young girls through basketball and also spread the benefits of participating in sports in addition to education".
"Hope4girlsAfrica is not just about basketball we also engage our girls in social programmes targeted towards young girls during the year and at every camp, we have a life seminar sessions every day to add to the depth of the programme. "
The camp will not just be about basketball alone, but also an opportunity to address life skills.
Mobolaji represented Nigeria at the Athens 2004 Olympics and also won the 2005 African Women's Basketball Championship besides a decent career in the USA inter-collegiate circuit with Fordham University in the NCAA championship.
Her decision to quit her full-time job as an Accountant at ESPN to move back to Nigeria to launch this programme has received international acclaim with documentaries from US sports Networks.
She's also attracting good corporate and social interest and this has fueled her commitment over the last three years to give back to Africa in more ways than sports.
"Our topics of focus will be dental and oral hygiene, gender violence and rape, nutrition, HIV and aids awareness and prevention. These are issues we at Hope4girlsAfrica feel are important to the overall development of the girl child but is being neglected in school".
"We want to thank our sponsors Nike and Victoria secret that have been with