By Yasinta Lukezo
For the first time in more than 15 years of the East African Chipkizi Cup, the tourney which is organized by the Future Stars Academy, introduces basketball competition for the 2024 instalment.
This year, more than 350 soccer teams and over 100 swimmers from eight countries will be converging in Arusha from 9 to 15 December 2024 for the East African Sports Tourney set to attract over 7000 sports men and women in the Northern Tanzania City.
Participating states for the 2024 Chipkizi Cup tourney include Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, the Host Tanzania (with Zanzibar) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
While the swimming category debuted in the 2023 Chipkizi Cup, this year Basketball is dribbling into the East African sports tourney for the first times, transforming what used to be a youth football event into a full-fledged international sporting extravaganza.
Observers believe that as more events, games, venues and participating countries continue to increase, the Arusha-based annual Chipkizi Cup is now heading towards becoming Africa’s own Olympics.
The Director of the Future Stars Academy (FSA), Alfred Itaeli reveals here that almost all the mentioned countries have confirmed their participation in the 2024 instalment of Chipkizi Cup, and chances are many more may enter in the last minutes.
Apart from Basketball, which is being held for the first time this year, and swimming which enters its second year in the games, the East African soccer tourney 2024 features several football competition categories, including the Under-7; Under-9, Under-11, Under-13, Under-15, under-17 and Under-20, for both boys and girls.
Basketball and Swimming will also feature a variety of specialized categories as well.
The Chipkizi Cup 2024 has also attracted various sports talent recruiting agents, scouts and soccer teams’ managements from the U.S University, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Macedonia and Kenya.
The 2024 Chipkizi Cup, which runs for the 15th year now, gets staged at various sporting arenas in Arusha, including the Tanganyika Game Trackers (TGT) grounds, the Aga-Khan Sports Center, Braeburn International (Swimming) the main Sheikh Amri Abeid City Stadium and the United World Colleges (UWC).