00:00Awesome, my name is Brianna Salvatore-Dueck, I am the head of strategy at Seventeen Sport,
00:04also a former professional basketball player, and fun fact, also a Young Sportmaker alumni
00:10from the class of 2020. Shout out to my Young Sportmakers. I am your moderator for today's
00:16session and I'm really honored to be here today to talk to you about the subject of
00:20empowering fans to play their part. And today we're going to look at a partnership between
00:25the Basketball Africa League and Agence Francaise de Développement and to see just how they have
00:33partnered up through sports sponsorship to leave an impact across Africa and empower fans to play
00:38their parts. So first I would like to invite up to the stage the head of partnerships for the BAL,
00:45Jean-Luc. Let's welcome Jean-Luc to the stage.
00:53And next I would like to invite to the stage Céline, who is the head of the Social Division at
00:59AFD.
01:00Céline, welcome to the stage.
01:04And lastly, I would like to invite our Young Sportmaker, Alice, to come and join us on the stage.
01:19Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay, so to start us off, I'm going to ask both Céline and Jean-Luc
01:25to share
01:25with us a little bit about what you do at the BAL AFD and what your organizations, a little bit
01:31about
01:31your organizations. So Jean-Luc, you want to start us off?
01:37Can you hear me? Okay. We usually say ladies first, but I'm happy to start. My name is Jean-Luc
01:44Agboiba. I'm the partnership lead at the Basketball Africa League. The BAL is a competition, the NBA
01:51launched in Africa three years ago now in partnership with FIBA. Because of COVID, we postponed the first
02:01edition. We did it in 2021. So now we just closed our third season. So it's a three-month competition.
02:09We have 12 teams and we crowned the best team on the continent.
02:15Love it. That's great. Céline, do you want to go ahead and share with us next?
02:18Good afternoon, Brianna. Good afternoon, everybody.
02:23So my name is Céline Vilquin. I'm the head of the Social Link Division at the Agence Française de Développement,
02:33AFD.
02:34So what is AFD? AFD is a public financial institution which is in charge of implementing the French
02:47cooperation policy. So it means that AFD supports projects that intend to reach the SDGs,
02:58Sustainable Development Goals. So it means that we finance projects that do have a very strong impact
03:07impact on environment and also on social issues. And I joined AFD more than 18 years ago, working on
03:18different sectors, different countries. Thank you, Céline. That's great. All right, we're going to go
03:24ahead and jump into our first question. So Céline, this one is for you. Can you share with us why
03:30the AFD decided to enter into a partnership with the BAL and how this has evolved from your partnership with
03:36the MBA Africa? Thank you, Brianna. Very good question. And so actually, first to mention that, so AFD started to
03:50work on the sport and development sector in 2018. So this is quite new. And when I say sport and
04:00development sector, I mean financing project using sport as a means to reach SDGs, so in order to
04:17increase, for example, access to education, gender equality or inclusion. As part of our strategy,
04:28strategy, we had a key objective which was to build partnership with key players in the sports sector for two
04:42main
04:43reasons. One was to encourage those sports players to invest in a project with strong social impact. So
05:03sport and development initiative. And also to use the power of their brand to attract
05:14African young people. Which is, I mean,
05:20NBA brand is quite more attractive than AFD, I have to say. Yes, I'll agree with you on that.
05:28And so, in fact, we started to first, before BAL, we started to
05:36sign an agreement with NBA. And I think this was the first agreement ever signed between NBA and
05:48the development bank. And NBA had already some grassroots programs with, you know, young people and local communities.
06:00But the idea of having this partnership was really to scale up those programs together.
06:09And also to bring those programs in schools, really to promote the sport at school,
06:17with a strong impact on education, gender equity. And so we were quite happy with this first partnership.
06:28And we really wanted to pursue and strengthen our program. But then on its side, NBA created a league
06:42in Africa with really the idea of investing in Africa, offering opportunities for young people
06:53people in their continent. And so for us, it was obvious that then we had to partner with BAL.
07:03Because we were really sharing the same objective of investing in Africa.
07:08So that was the reason why we ended up with BAL. And we are very happy with that.
07:16Awesome. That's great. So next, we're going to actually go ahead and queue up a video,
07:20which is going to give a little teaser and a preview of what this partnership looks like in action.
07:25So, Future of Sport technical team.
08:04Who else is fired up? Who wants to go play basketball after watching that video?
08:08Because that gets me excited. No, but for real, we're going to go ahead and jump.
08:12Now, I'm going to pass the next question to Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc, can you share with us a little
08:16bit more
08:17about this partnership? We got a teaser here in the video, but we'd love to hear more about you
08:21and how, in particular, this has inspired fans towards action, towards positive action themselves.
08:27I know we mentioned edutainment in the back room, but we'd love to hear you elaborate a bit here.
08:33Thank you. Thank you, Brianna. Yeah. And first, I think the main point is the concept.
08:40More than just the video, but the concept, it is something we discussed with AFD,
08:45is how we can combine education and entertainment. And this is the concept that we named
08:51Edutainment. But the idea, what we did is that the BL and the NBA have a huge network on the
09:01continent.
09:02People doing fantastic things with the game of basketball, and we really wanted to bring them
09:07together. But we have a WNBA champion, Amshatou Maiga, who moved back to Mali, and she's running a program there.
09:15So we worked with her to do something in Mali to select three kids. We did the same in Côte
09:21d'Ivoire,
09:22in Benin, in Togo, in Morocco, in Goma, in Jersey. And at the end, we selected 20 boys and girls.
09:30We bring them together in Senegal for three weeks. And, you know, it was not just about basketball.
09:36We really wanted to show their skills. You know, but during the draft, a lot of great talent were not
09:43selected because they were not able to speak in front of the camera. They don't have that ability
09:49to be a leader or to communicate their ideas. So we really wanted to make sure that through this
09:54program, we will select future leaders, people who can inspire. We know that the basketball talent will
10:00find a way, you know, to be part of the league or the NBA. But through this program, it was
10:05another
10:06goal is to really identify the leader of tomorrow. So they're more than just our fans. You know,
10:14it's potentially people who will work tomorrow for our league. And we organize the draft in villages and
10:21in small towns to really show the power of sports. And I think this is what the IFD wanted to
10:29show with
10:30us. You know, we are working with Nike, Brent Jordan and many other sponsors who we know that they can
10:37help us to grow the league. But what we wanted to do with AFD is a little bit different. It's
10:41to make
10:41sure that our game can be accessible to people everywhere they are and to inspire them. So this
10:48program will be broadcasted at the end of this year. We are in discussion with a huge TV channel who
10:55is
10:55present. In Africa, we're expected to reach around 100 million fans on TV. So even if on the court, it
11:03was just 20. 100 million is what he said. So yeah, it's the NBA. We also are working with ESPN,
11:10cannot
11:10please send many other channels. So we really want to use the power of sports and the media to inspire
11:17the next generation. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. It gets me fired up. Next Celine, I'm going to jump to
11:23you.
11:23Can you share with us some of the impact that you're intending to drive through this partnership
11:28from the AFD perspective? Yeah. Thank you for the question, Brianna. So from AFD perspective,
11:38the idea was with this program to raise awareness of those younger people in Africa of SDGs and especially issues
11:55related to health, education, environment, and all those related issues. And as it was shown,
12:13in fact, there were those 20 young people being selected coming from, I think it was seven countries
12:26in Africa. And then they came to the basketball academy located in Senegal, which is called the SEED
12:38academy, which AFD also supports under another program. And what is very important is that those academies, so
12:50young people, they can practice sports and also there's the education part. And the AFD support to those
13:02academies is really targeted to education. So making sure that there's a high quality level of education.
13:12education. So making sure that those young people, they're going to complete their education or secondary level.
13:22And so we're using sports. And this is the example with this TV series to reach, to be kept at
13:30school,
13:31and then after to find unemployment and to get employed and etc. So this is one of the
13:42first impact we are looking at. And the second one, which is also very important in our strategy, is gender
13:51equality.
13:51And so there's also the same number of girls and boys. And those academies, they really provide,
14:05or try to empower the girls and to strengthen their leadership and to fight against stereotypes.
14:14And so those are really the objectives of the program and the impact we're looking at.
14:21That's great. Okay, so we have 40 seconds left. I'm going to throw it to Alex, our young sport maker,
14:27who's going to give us concluding remarks from the session. And then I don't think we're going to have
14:32time, but Jean-Luc and Céline, if you want to also give us one or two words at the end,
14:37final takeaways for this group.
14:39Alex, the floor is yours.
14:41Thank you, Brianna. Thank you everyone for having me here today with you. It's such an honor
14:46to speak with you about this topic. To conclude, I would like to highlight two main ideas. I will say
14:55that if everyone is willing, we can really evolve into something better. And also that in sharing,
15:01communicating, always in a positive way and through sports, we can really do a lot of big achievements
15:08together. And as a young sports maker, I really wanted to highlight that for us, Gen Z, those topics
15:15are more than important for us. And I hope everyone understands what really matters. And I strongly hope
15:23this will encourage more partnerships like this to exist in other continents to keep this positive energy
15:30for our future. Let's go. That was beautiful. That was perfect. Jean-Luc, Céline, do you want to add one,
15:36two words? You have 10 seconds. No, no, but we really value this partnership with AFD. We're really
15:43glad that we're putting this thing together and hopefully we will do something bigger during the
15:49Olympics next year in Paris. So thank you, Céline, and thanks AFD for this beautiful partnership.
15:56Thank you. We're very happy also with this partnership. And maybe a final message that
16:02there's plenty of opportunity to invest in a project with strong impact in Africa, especially
16:10dedicated to the young people. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Let's give a big round of applause to our
16:16panelists. Thank you so much. Let's...
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