Basketball in Cameroon: from Yaoundé to the NBA

The men's team: a final in 2007

Cameroon has played 11 African Championships (AfroBasket). Its best result is the 2007 final in Angola: unbeaten in the group stage, the Lions lost the final to the hosts (86-72), who claimed a fifth straight title. Luc Mbah a Moute, then a college player, was in the squad coached by Lazare Adingono. Second place earned Cameroon a spot at the 2008 Olympic qualifying tournament, but no ticket to Beijing.

In August 2025, again in Angola, the Lions reached the semi-finals, narrowly losing to Angola (77-73), then lost the third-place game to Nigeria (75-72): fourth place, as in 2009. Yves Missi, the New Orleans Pelicans centre, made his national-team debut there. Coached by Alfred Aboya and captained by Fabien Ateba, the team has never qualified for a World Cup; as of 1 September 2026 it was 55th in the FIBA rankings.

The women's team

Cameroon's women have played 15 Women's AfroBasket tournaments. They won bronze in 1983, 1984 and 2021, and silver in 2015: that year, at home in Yaoundé, they lost the final to Senegal (81-66), who also took Africa's only place at the Rio Olympics. They finished 6th in 2023 and 5th in 2025. As of 1 September 2026 they were 37th in the FIBA rankings; many players are based in Europe, particularly in France.

Cameroonians in the NBA

Joel Embiid, long courted by Cameroon (he was named in the preliminary squad for AfroBasket 2017 but did not play), obtained French and then US citizenship in 2022 and chose the United States, with whom he won Olympic gold in Paris in 2024. Joakim Noah, born in New York and the grandson of Cameroonian footballer Zacharie Noah, played for France: he belongs to the diaspora, not to Cameroon's national team.

Scouting camps

The road from Yaoundé to the NBA often runs through the camps Luc Mbah a Moute organises at home. Pascal Siakam, then at St Andrew's Seminary in Bafia, a couple of miles from the Mbah a Moute family home, attended in 2011 and again in 2012; he was then picked for the Basketball Without Borders camp (an NBA and FIBA programme), where he impressed Masai Ujiri, later president of the Raptors. Joel Embiid, who had been aiming for volleyball and football, took up basketball at 15, was spotted by Mbah a Moute and left for the United States at 16.

The NBA Academy Africa in Saly, Senegal, is the other pathway: Ulrich Chomche, born in Bafang, joined it at 12.

FAP in the Basketball Africa League

The Armed Forces and Police club (FAP) of Yaoundé, which plays at the Yaoundé Multipurpose Sports Complex (5,263 seats, opened in 2009), is the only Cameroonian club to have played in the Basketball Africa League (BAL), the continental league launched with the NBA. Invited to the first season after champions Condor BC declined, it reached the quarter-finals in 2021 and finished fourth in 2022; it failed to qualify in 2023. Chomche played seven games for FAP in 2022.

At home, FAP dominates the men's Elite league, which it won four seasons in a row from 2019–20 to 2022–23, and won the Cameroon Cup in 2022 and 2024.

The federation

The Cameroon Basketball Federation, which grew out of a national federation founded in 1961 and has been a FIBA member since 1965, is headquartered in Nkoldongo, near Yaoundé's Omnisport stadium. Samuel Nduku, a former player and official of the Phoenix club, has led it since 2009. On 30 November 2022 in Douala he stood for re-election against Yves Tsala, former head of the Centre regional league, backed by diaspora players including Luc Mbah a Moute, and Anne-Marie Safaissou, a former vice-president. He was still president in early 2023, and FIBA still lists him as such in 2026; Anne-Marie Safaissou is vice-president.

Frequently asked questions