Basketball in Africa

THE government has confirmed that President Jakaya Kikwete has agreed to pay the salary of national basketball team coach Albert Sokaitis from the United States of America.
The good news was broken by the Minister for Information, Youth, Culture and Sports, Dr Fenella Mukangara, when presenting her ministry's 2013-14 budget estimates in Parliament in Dodoma early this week.
She noted that Sokaitis is already in the country and the Tanzania Basketball Federation (TBF) is in initial stages to enter into contract with him. We congratulate President Kikwete for his commitment in improving the standard of the country's sports.
This is not the first time he offers support to sports associations in their endeavour to turn around their fortunes. He has already helped several other associations and he seems ready to continue doing so.
On June 29, 2006, Marcio Maximo from Brazil was appointed head coach of the Tanzania national team (Taifa Stars) with the government paying his salary and other benefits.
In August 2010, he extended the offer to Maximo's successor Jan Poulsen from Denmark and even incumbent national coach Kim Poulsen is in the government's payroll.
The Netball Association of Tanzania (Chaneta) also enjoyed the president's generosity when in 2010 it was allowed to engage an Australian expatriate, Simone McKinnis, who, however, stayed in the country for four months only.
Under the president's initiative, the government had also hired athletics, boxing and judo coaches from Cuba. This is the first time TBF deploys a coach on a long-term basis for promotion of the game and as its officials say, the arrival of the coach will be a key step in basketball promotion, particularly for young players.
We hope that the federation will live up to its word as that is the best way to reciprocate Kikwete's gesture. It will be unwise and totally ungrateful for TBF to repeat mistakes done by other associations.
McKinnis, for example, was forced to resign by weaknesses in the implementation of her contract and also because she was not impressed with the way netball was being run in the country. The Australian was fed up with the poor services she received during her brief stay in the country.
She complained of, among other things, delay in payment of her salaries which, instead of being paid in foreign currency as agreed, she was paid in Tanzanian shillings. But we also expect the government to fill in the void left by McKinnis as promised by Minister Mukangara in 2011 when she said the government was already working on arrangements to recruit a replacement.