Title: Afrobasket 2009
Location: Tripoli, Libya
Official Site: http://libya2009.fiba.com
Information: The 2009 Africa Nations Basketball Championships, or Afrobasket, starts in less than a week.

The 25th Afrobasket (discuss) is being held August 5-15 in Tripoli, Libya.

Teams participating include Libya (host), Angola, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Congo, Egypt, Rwanda, Mozambique, South Africa, and Senegal.

Discuss the 2009 Africa Championships of Basketball in our forum.

In the last decade of Afrobasket tournaments, the national team from Angola has been the most dominant and most organized nation.  Behind players like Joaquim Gomes, Olímpio Cipriano, Ângelo Victoriano, Eduardo Mingas, and Carlos Morais, the Angolans have won gold in nine of the last ten Afrobasket tournaments, with Senegal interrupting the dominance in 1997.

Can Nigeria and Cameroon, the two teams with the best chances of defeating Angola, finally break through and end Angola’s golden era of basketball? 

The Africa Nations Championship will feature several big names.  In addition to Angola’s Gomes, Mingas, Morais, and Cipriano, there is Boniface N’Dong, Pape Sow, and DeSagna Diop of Senegal, Gabe Muoneke and Ebi Ere of Nigeria, Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, Alfred Aboya, and Brice Vounang from Cameroon.

The top three teams from the Afrobasket tournament will automatically qualify for the FIBA World Championship being held in Turkey.  Even if African nation doesn’t finish in the top three, there is still a chance to make the World Championships, as 3-4 more teams can be selected as wild cards by FIBA to complete the 24-team field.