As a little kid, dreaming big was natural. It came easily, like breathing air. Some of us dreamt about being astronauts. Others, superstars. And perhaps even a few presidents here and there. But as we got older, dreaming big felt less and less practical—almost like a nuisance to our day-to-day lives. However, for over 6,000 young basketball players in Africa, dreaming big is a reality that will never be out of reach.
Giants of Africa (GOA), an organization dedicated to inspiring youth through outreach programs, has encouraged young boys and girls with the value of dreaming big. Since 2003, GOA co-founder and Vice-Chairman and President of the Toronto Raptors, Masai Ujiri, has brought together a diverse group of working professionals from the African diaspora to build over 30 basketball courts and help lead camps in over 16 countries.
“We must look within and recognize that each and every one of us can start small, with a single idea or opportunity,” Ujiri said at a GOA’s AfriCAN event in Toronto. “When we come together and support one another, we can make a real impact.”
Hosting the first ever Giants of Africa Alumni Reunion, which took place in Las Vegas last month during the 2024 NBA Summer League, GOA was able to bring together former campers and clinic participants to not only set the stage for future initiatives but also to communicate to a younger generation the power and opportunity behind playing basketball.
“Our dream was just to make sure that kids coming after us didn’t go through what we went through as international students. We wanted to provide an avenue where the transition will be smoother than what we went through,” said GOA co-founder and former Georgetown Hoyas basketball player Godwin Owinje.
Owinje, a current NBA and international scout for the Brooklyn Nets, is living proof that having the heart to follow your passions can lead to a higher calling. Coming from a small neighborhood in the Delta State of Nigeria, where most kids don’t normally go to college or even finish high school, and where soccer runs rampantly along the streets, the 6-8 Owinje had to learn what basketball was.
“The reason I [tell] [my] story is because if someone like me can make it out of the neighborhood that I came out of, anybody can do it,” said Owinje.
Although Owinje has an undying love for his college team and shouts “Hoyas for Life!” his heart truly lies with the kids whose smiles radiate ever so brightly in the midst of doing what they love.
“We hammer home, whenever we’re talking to these kids, that if you dream, own that dream and do everything you can, do everything possible to achieve that goal you set for yourself of what you want to become,” he said.
Ndeye Fatou Beye, a GOA alum (2018) and current basketball scout in Senegal, is one of the many people Owinje and Ujiri have reached with the program.
“[The program] is opening your eyes to not only say like, ‘I’m a young girl, I’m a Black woman, I’m African, I can’t achieve any goals.’ It made me open my eyes, to be able to say, you know what, I can be whoever I wanna be if I believe in myself. And Masai was always there to tell us it’s not because you’re from Africa; you can be who you wanna be in the future, and that’s really impacted my life. And yeah, ’til that day, I have the same mentality to always believe in myself no matter what and no matter where I am right now,” she says.
Using basketball as a stepping stone to achieve her goals, Beye utilized the confidence she learned at the camp and the lesson of “how to be in a society dominated by men and in the sport industry” to help foster BAL4HER, a program dedicated to advancing gender equality and women’s leadership while encouraging young women and girls to invest in themselves.
And as an alum, Beye is excited to make a similar impact. “And I think right now I want to be more impactful in the life of young women right now because that will make the difference,” she says.
Standing firm as the epitome of what it means to “dream big,” Tolulope Omogbehin, known widely as “Omos,” credits his rise in the WWE world not only to his impressive 7-3 stature but also to the lessons he learned as a young adult in the GOA camps.
“I remember the first time we went to the camp, Masai said use basketball as a tool to get to where you want to get to in life,” Omos recalls. “And as a young person, I never truly understood what that meant.”
“It wasn’t until being in the WWE for the past five years and doing that, and all the training from basketball, the perseverance, the teamwork—all those things have helped me become professional in what I’m doing today,” he says.
With a height one would call “ NBA perfect,” it’s expected of someone like Omos to simply take basketball and run with it. However, for him, using basketball as a tool to take the nontraditional route opened up a sea of possibilities that set him apart from the rest.
And his success is a testament to that.
“‘Dream big’ is like not having a cap on the possibilities of your life, right? I think for me, I’ve always had an imaginative mind, and I think GOA kind of helped and expanded that and like, while you might think this might be the end for you, you can dream before that, because you never know where you’re gonna land,” Omos adds. “It can always be a dream, you can always dream.”
As GOA continues to expand to more countries, build more courts and push more initiatives to foster growth in the African diaspora, GOA alumni like Omos and Beye continue to inspire, expanding the minds of the next generation of basketball players.
“Like I told them in the alumni reunion the other day, it doesn’t matter how big or small you affect another kid, another person’s life or another youth in Africa’s life, it means the whole world to that person, just like it meant the whole world when we did it to you,” Owinje says.
Not only are the alumni affecting the very lives of the youth, they’re also living, breathing, testaments to the importance of never letting go of a dream, no matter where you’re from, and no matter how out of reach it may seem.
Portraits via Giants of Africa.
