Angola and Botswana battle for U18 African Championships places

SHEFFIELD (Julio Chitunda's African Message) - By the end of this week, either Angola or Botswana's national teams will secure places for this summer's U18 African Championships for Men and Women, as the regional qualification tournament is underway in the Mozambican capital of Maputo.

The four national teams, the only contenders, are taking part in the African qualification zone VI tournament that started Sunday.

The men’s U18 event will take place in August in Mozambique, while the host country and dates for the women’s are still to be determined.

Whatever the results between Angola and Botswana, in both categories, only one national team will qualify to either African U18 tournament.

These national teams have not beaten their opponents on the floor. In fact, they did what others did not.

They showed up for the African qualification zone VI tournament in Maputo, while seven other national teams (Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe) withdrew.

This story sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately this scenario is becoming regular in African basketball.

Last month, only two out of eight U18 national teams for men and women took part in the African qualification zone IV tournament in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This time, although Mozambique is taking part in the tournament, only Angola and Botswana are competing to qualify.

The host nation is taking the tournament as a preparation as they are already qualified for both U18 African Championships.

Mozambique's men and women both finished third at the 2010 U18 African Championships, which gave them direct qualification for this year’s event.

Either Botswana or Angola will join women’s defending champions Egypt, runners-up Nigeria, bronze medallists Mozambique, fourth-place Mali and zone IV winner Democratic Republic of Congo in the field for the U18 African Championship for Women.

Meanwhile, either Botswana or Angola's men's side will join the defending champions from Egypt, runners-up Tunisia, bronze medallists Mozambique and zone IV winner Democratic Republic of Congo in the men's event.

Botswana and Angola's national teams enjoy different continental status in most basketball categories.

While Angola are the highest-placed African men’s national team in the FIBA Ranking, Botswana struggles to join the continent elite.

Despite the differences, these two countries have in common the desire to give young players a chance to develop their basketball skills and attending this African qualification tournament shows it well.

However, as some African countries seem to be slowing their engagement to basketball, Mozambique, who are 48th in FIBA's Combined Ranking, cannot stop committing to the game.

Their women's national team finished fifth at last year’s Afrobasket, but they accepted to represent Africa at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) for Women, replacing bronze medallists Senegal. Fourth-placed Nigeria also turned down the chance of playing for a chance to qualify for the London Olympics.

Fascinated by basketball or not, Mozambique will host this year's U18 African Championship for Men.

All these commitments raised my curiosity, and I decided to find out more.

Francisco Mabjaia, chairman of Mozambique's Basketball Federation, told me why his country does what some African nations turn down.

“The reason we are widely committed to basketball is because Mozambicans love basketball and we can not let our countrymen and women down,” he said.

“Basketball is the second most popular sport in our country, after football."

With all this passion for basketball, I wonder whether this is a message to encourage neighbouring countries to follow in Mozambique’s footsteps.

The reality though is that Mozambique just wants to develop its basketball players’ potential as much as possible.

The country is taking part in the tournament to give its national teams’ players competitiveness and experience.

“Each country has its own reasons, and we are not making judgements on it,” Mabjaia explained.

Hosting a tournament is a challenging task, but Mabjaia refused to show disappointment with the withdrawal of other national teams as they notified them beforehand.

“We have not arranged any logistics or accommodations for them. So there is no financial loss in this regard," he pointed out.

“Quite often we propose friendly tournaments to our neighbouring countries in order to boost our young players’ prospects, unfortunately it is often unsuccessful.

“We are committed to do anything to strength this African region’s potential.” 

Until July most U18 African national teams for Men and Women are expected to compete for places at the 2012 U18 African Championship.

African Qualification zone is distributed according to regional location. There are still five other Africa Qualification zones to compete before the U18 Africa Championship in both categories later in the year.

Nevertheless, I am not sure how many national teams will show up to compete in upcoming events, which makes for a bleak scenario for African hopeful players.

Julio Chitunda

FIBA

FIBA’s columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

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