By: Mohamed Abu Conteh
The Sierra Leone Basketball Federation (SLBF) is currently seeking funds to lead the country’s Under 16 male basketball team to participate in the U16 AfroBasket 2025 in Kigali, Rwanda next month (September 2025) for the first time in the country’s basketball history.
The lads achieved this feat in an extraordinary display in Guinea with just six players after nine players were disqualified due to age violations against a full side of Mauritania.
The Federation is now left in a thin line of participation or not, as only the National Olympic Committee has supported the Federation with ten thousand dollars, with fate hanging in the balance and eying the government of President Bio, who has shown so much towards sports, particularly football.
Leading to the qualification, the Sierra Leone Ministry of Sports and the National Sports Authority neglected the team with no support, yet the Federation’s President, Ali Hijazi, led the presentation of the FIBA Africa Zone-2 Champions’ trophy to both the Ministry and the NSA.
However, information reaching out to this author is that the Federation presented a budget of thirty-five thousand dollars and is now calling on the public to support through the GoFundMe.
Consequently, the Federation’s president, Ali Hijazi, is trying all avenues for support, not to dispirit the lads’ ambition to explore their talents on an international stage through a discipline that is unpopular in the country.