By Joe Apu
Africa number one basketball nation, Nigeria have been drawn alongside known foes Cote d’ Ivore, Mali and East African surprise team Kenya for the AfroBasket 2021 championship bulled for Kigali, Rwanda.
Nigeria, which finished second place at the 2017 edition, will attempt to re-enact her FIBA World Cup 2019 Africa Qualifiers performance which saw her punch pick a ticket to the FIBA World Cup 2019 in China with three Games to spare under Coach Alex Nwora.
The 2021 Tokyo Olympics bound team will hope to go a step further than their 2017 achievement where they won the silver medal.
The team who lost to host-Tunisia had since evolved to become number one in Africa and number 22 in the world.
Despite narrowly missing out of the quarter finals, the team was able to punch their Olympics ticket as the highest ranked team out of Africa at the tournament.
FIBA Africa on Friday conducted draw for the 16 qualified teams that will participate in the event with the 2015 African champions drawn in Group C.
Group A consists of host Rwanda, Angola, DR Congo and 3 GRE, defending champions Tunisia lead Group B with Central African Republic, Guinea and Egypt.
Group D has Senegal, Cameroon, 2GRE and South Sudan to complete the teams that will take part in the competition.
The competitions is slated for city of Kigali, Rwanda from 24th of August to 5th of September 2021.
The last two qualified teams will fill the last spot in A and D.