By Morakinyo Abodunrin
The Vice Chairman and President of Toronto Raptors, Masai Ujiri, believes Africa and particularly Nigeria, can achieve her full potential in sports if governmental authorities push more investments towards development of more sporting infrastructure.
Ujiri, the co-founder of the Giants of Africa- the non-profit organization- with the ambitious ‘Built Within’ initiative to build 100 basketball courts across Africa, said Africa and indeed Nigeria already has an edge to be the greatest given the depth of talents across sports, adding with more and well-equipped infrastructure, more athletes across the continent would rule the world.
“ Africa is blessed and there is something we have that nobody in the world has a much as us and that is the talents,” Ujiri said on the sidelines of the Basketball Clinic graced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, at the Ilupeju Junior Grammar School in Lagos on Sunday.
“The talents in Africa is big and these youths you are seeing today, would surely become something big in life and why can’t we give them the platform to succeed: Ujiri asked rhetorically.
According to Ujiri, the Giants of Africa is almost at the half way mark of its ‘Build Within’ initiative with some 38 basketball courts already built across Africa including in Lagos, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Tanzania, Rwanda amongst others.
Yet he believes government has bigger role to play in building more infrastructure so that upcoming talents can fulfil their potentials.
“Already, we have built about 38 courts across Africa and we are going to open more soon in the summer; we are slowly getting there and we are right about half way to our target of 100 and you hear the Duke and Duchess of Sussex saying they are going to donate a court to us through their Archewell Foundation in Abuja and that is an additional court that would build in Abuja,” he added.
“ We need more basketball courts; more soccer fields as well as more stadia across Africa.
“ We need more infrastructure not only in sports but even in entertainments as well.”
