Who will host the African Championships in 2015?

SHEFFIELD (Julio Chitunda's African Message) - The question of the moment in African basketball circles is which countries will host the next FIBA African Championships.

Tunisia and Angola have submitted bids to stage AfroBasket 2015, while Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon and Angola applied to be the site for AfroBasket for Women 2015.

The tournaments will serve as qualifiers for the 2016 Olympic Games to be played in Rio de Janeiro.

FIBA Africa will only announce the host countries in the next few weeks, perhaps before the end of the year.

Over the past three decades, both tournaments have taken place in all regions of the African continent, from the most northern countries to the south, from west to the east coast.

As the game evolved worldwide, it became inevitable that the host countries should follow the organisational standards of their continental counterparts.

The large turnouts in the latest tournaments held in Abidjan and Maputo showed the growing popularity of basketball in Africa regardless of the gender.

In Maputo, for instance, all of Mozambique's games in the Second Round were sold out, attracting people of all walks of life.

Let me share with you my thoughts about the applicants to host Africa's flagship tournaments two years from now.

Cote d'Ivoire - Although they hosted the men's continental championship in August, the women's team is yet to host the tournament.

The Ivorian women finished seventh in Maputo, but they have potential to make it to the podium if the likes of Kani Kouyate, Kariata Diaby and Salimata Berte keep on working hard.

If the Ivorians are chosen to host the tournament, their tireless home crowd will surely leave a mark.

Cameroon, one of the most intriguing teams at AfroBasket Women 2013, submitted a bid to host the tournament for the first time in the country's basketball history.

Their head coach, Alain Zedong, told me in Maputo they are a basketball passionate country. In order to succeed, they just need some continuity in their basketball programme.

Angola became the first country to win back-to-back AfroBasket for Women in the past decade.

Their women's team hosted the tournament in 1983, but it was their neighbours Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as Zaire) who clinched gold.

The race to host AfroBasket 2015 has two frontrunners - Tunisia and Angola.

It has been almost two years since Tunisia hinted their intention of hosting the AfroBasket.

The North African country staged the tournament on two occasions (1965 and 1987), claiming a silver and a fifth-place finish respectively.

Angola have come away with gold on all three occasions (1989, 1999 and 2007), they have hosted the continental championship.

It might sound an odd idea, but I always wondered WHAT IF either tournament was held in a neutral country where basketball is a passion but needs a little a push?

Obviously, the potential host country would need to own adequate basketball facilities and be experiencing political stability to avoid last-minute changes like AfroBasket 2011 which was held in Madagascar after Cote d'Ivoire was forced to withdraw due to political turmoil in the country.

Whichever countries are chosen to host the 2015 FIBA African Championships for Men and Women, organisers should make sure to offer the best basketball quality service the continent has to offer.

Julio Chitunda

FIBA

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