So, after being delayed by Covid for over a year, Africa's new basketball league finally tipped-off with the continent’s top sides faced-off in the newly-formed professional competition.

Designed to promote the sport, drive economic growth and unearth rising talent, the Basketball Africa League (BAL) - backed by the NBA, who is helping to organise a league outside of the United States for the first time - sees 12 featured teams, from 12 countries, in a competition which replaces the old Africa Basketball League, another pan-African club tournament, which had been running since 1971.

The 12 teams involved are the national champions from Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia – who were all guaranteed a spot, with representatives from Algeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique and Rwanda, with the other six teams having to go through qualifying rounds.

President of newly-formed BAL side Patriots, Brian Kirungi, said: "Now they can touch and feel basketball in their own arena. I see a huge potential - attract more investment, more partners, the corporate world in Africa to say: 'look, we are taking ourselves from an amateur to a professional stage'."

Adam Silver, the Commissioner for the NBA, said: "We think that we can have the biggest impact in Africa and we see a great opportunity there with well over a billion people who have an amazing affinity for basketball."

Basketball's world governing body Fiba is also involved in the hunt for the next big African superstar to follow the likes of Congolese-American former professional Dikembe Mutombo, who said: "Africa is a continent full of secrets and treasure and I think all this treasure is going to be found.

"As this game is about to start, there will be more players coming out from the continent that we haven't seen before."

The BAL was set to start in March last year, with matches originally set to be played in Kigali in Rwanda, Dakar in Senegal, Cairo in Egypt, Lagos in Nigeria, Luanda in Angola, Tunis or Monastir in Tunisia and Rabat in Morocco, but because of Covid pandemic, it finally arrived - 14 months late.