NBA Africa & M-Pesa Go for Great with a Game-Changing Youth Basketball Program!
Kenya, we have exciting news for young basketball fans in your major cities!
NBA Africa and M-Pesa are bringing a new program to Kenya: The M-PESA Jr. NBA program.
With the tagline being “Go For Great”, this program will help over 10,000 boys and girls in Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, and Kisumu improve their basketball skills while learning about smart money habits through financial literacy programming.
This marks the league’s most expansive youth development program in East Africa to date.
The exciting program tipped off with a clinic for over 100 local coaches at SABIS International School in Nairobi. To gear up for the tournaments ahead, we’ve moved through the capital city with some exhilarating roadshows and over the next few months, four regional tournaments will take place for youth aged 13-16 in Nairobi (Feb. 22-23), Mombasa (March 8-9), Eldoret (March 15-16), and Kisumu (March 22-23).
Each city will host 20 boys’ and 20 girls’ teams, who will take part in skills development sessions and competitive games. The top 80 players will then be grouped into four boys’ teams and four girls’ teams that will play games in a round-robin format, and the top 16 boys and 16 girls from each city will get the chance to attend an elite top 100 camp at Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa this April.
Fear not! It’s not all basketball! M-PESA, Safaricom’s leading mobile payment platform, will be hosting financial literacy workshops throughout, to help young athletes develop smart money habits and empowering them for the future.
“This partnership with Safaricom is a big step in making basketball more accessible to kids across Kenya,” said NBA Africa CEO Clare Akamanzi.
“This is more than basketball,” added Safaricom CEO Dr. Peter Ndegwa.
To learn all about it, get involved and visit NBA Africa’s official social media pages and join the conversation using #MPesaJrNBA & #GoForGreat.
Get ready, Kenya—this is just the beginning!
