Basketball in Africa

THE Inter-Regional basketball championship dubbed 'Taifa Cup' which was earlier scheduled to start on Sunday in Dodoma has been pushed forward for one day, to give organisers and host region more time to finalize preparations.
Director of Technical and Competition Commission of the Tanzania Basketball Federation (TBF) Manase Zablon said the tournament will now start on Monday at the Jamhuri Stadium and Dodoma Secondary School basketball courts.
Manase said the decision to push forward the event which brings together regional basketball teams also target to give the federation more time to get sponsors to rescue the tournament, which is hanging in balance because the federation is in deep financial troubles.
TBF officials are insisting that the tournament will take place as planned despite the financial setback, which was caused by the eleventh hour withdrawal by a company that had earlier shown interest to support the event.
"The decision of pushing forward the event for at least one day was to give the hosts and the federation time to finalise preparations and look for plan B, after failing to secure sponsorship for the event," he said.
The federation has requested all the participating regions to incur some of the tournament's expenses such as accommodation and food as part of cost sharing.
"Other costs will be handled by the federation and we expect to use gate collections as part of the source of income to enable the event to carry on as planned," he said.
TBF need 58m/- to facilitate a week-long annual tournament, which brings together basketball players from various regions in the country. According to TBF, 17 regions have confirmed their participation in the event.
The regions are Tanga, Coast, Arusha, Mwanza, Mbeya, Ruvuma, Katavi, Iringa, Kilimanjaro, Tabora, Shinyanga, Rukwa, Mara, Kagera, Kigoma and host Dodoma.
Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke will also compete as regions. The event defending champions are Tanga in men's category while Dar es Salaam are the ladies category reigning champions.