Basketball in Africa

Newly elected Basketball Union of Zimbabwe (BUZ) executive led by president Addison Chiware faces a daunting task of transforming the fortunes of the sport.
Chiware and his team were elected at the BUZ Annual Congress, at the National Sports Stadium last weekend.
Other members of the executive include the secretary general Joe Mujuru, competitions director Forbes Shuva and Skhumbuzo Ndlovu who will take charge of the Technical and Development portfolio.
Charmaine Chamboko will be responsible for Women and Youth Development while Shinga Magede retained his position at the helm of the Athletes' Commission.
Basketball in the country has recently been far from impressive, both on and off the pitch.
Flagship teams have in many occasions failed to fulfill international assignments largely due to financial difficulties or have performed badly on national duty.
Chiware was however optimistic of a bright future.
"I think failure to attend tournaments will be a thing of the past now given the new dispensation of a stand-alone ministry of sports," Chiware said.
"Minister Andrew Langa has also promised us that we will have the full backing of the government. But we are also going into partnerships with multinational companies, a move which will ease some of our financial burdens," he added.
Chiware said they were looking forward to the task ahead as they seek to take basketball to another level in the next four years. Their focus would be on winning medals in various regional, continental and international events.
"The next step is podium performance, we want to see the best level of basketball. We want medals starting from our junior level especially at this year's Zone Six Under-20 Games."
Zimbabwe basketball has clearly failed to make a mark on the international stage with a combined ranking of 113 and joint 24rd in Africa.
It is the women team, ranked 73th in the world that has continued to show promise, qualifying for continental tournaments, while their male counterparts have been nothing short of mediocre in performance.
Half of the personnel in the previous executive failed to last the distance of their term citing other commitments. It will be interesting to see if the incumbent executive can see the term through in one piece.