{"id":180302,"date":"2025-07-19T00:37:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T00:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/180302\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T00:37:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T00:37:35","slug":"ex-raptors-exec-masai-ujiri-talks-giants-of-africa-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/180302\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Raptors exec Masai Ujiri talks Giants of Africa Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Masai Ujiri’s July is shaping up to be quite the rollercoaster ride. The recently-fired former Toronto Raptors executive<\/a> is navigating his sudden departure from a franchise where he’d spent 13 seasons while also launching the second edition of his private foundation’s Giants of Africa Festival \u2014 all within a one-month span.<\/p>\n

The humanitarian work, Ujiri pledged, will continue regardless of his employment status. The British-born NBA executive, raised in his father’s native Nigeria, founded Giants of Africa in 2003 \u2014 back when he was just starting off as a scout and long before becoming the first African team president of a professional North American sports franchise.<\/p>\n

\n People are also reading\u2026\n <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an obligation for me,\u201d Ujiri said. \u201cIt\u2019s a passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foundation’s ambitions have risen with his own success. Giants of Africa has reached thousands of campers across 18 countries. It has helped build more than three dozen courts on the continent. High-profile supporters include Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s The Archewell Foundation<\/a>. 2023\u2019s inaugural Giants of Africa Festival united more than 250 boys and girls around a week of basketball clinics, life skills lessons and community building that culminated in a concert headlined by South African superstar Tyla<\/a>. The goal? A \u201cborderless Africa\u201d as Ujiri likes to say.<\/p>\n

\"Philanthropy<\/p>\n

FILE – Toronto Raptors President Masai Ujiri speaks to the media at an NBA basketball press conference, July 8, 2024, in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Christopher Katsarov – The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The festival returns to Kigali, Rwanda, on July 26 with a lineup featuring Nigerian pop singer Ayra Starr and WNBA great Candace Parker<\/a>. Two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard<\/a> \u2014 brought to Toronto by Ujiri for the team’s championship-winning 2018-2019 season \u2014 will mentor campers and train underserved youth.<\/p>\n

Ujiri discussed the upcoming event, and his future, with The Associated Press. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Q: Why’d you expand Giants of Africa Festival 2025 to 320 young participants from 20 African nations?<\/p>\n

A: When we had the last festival, we really focused on \u2014 whether it was the basketball, the life skills, the coaching, the mentorship \u2014 we focused on culture. We focused on the whole ecosystem of how we feel kids need this opportunity to grow. It really inspired us to think about how we bring this to more countries.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re doing this incredible, incredible fashion show showing the print, the threads of Africa, and who we really are. It used to be weird where you\u2019d see somebody wearing cloth from Africa. Now it\u2019s part of the fashion. It\u2019s part of us. It\u2019s just like Afrobeats<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s part of life everywhere. Everybody wants to wear a boubou. You see a lot of fashion designers from all over the world using our prints. We want to showcase that and give these youth the opportunity to see that this is how they can also expand their minds.<\/p>\n

\"Philanthropy<\/p>\n

FILE – Masai Ujiri walks between rows of youth players on the basketball court during a three-day basketball training camp run by Giants of Africa in Juba, South Sudan, Aug. 20, 2019.<\/p>\n

Sam Mednick – AP<\/p>\n

Q: How does\u00a0it feel to see basketball investments lead to the sport growing across the continent?<\/p>\n

A: It’s been unbelievable. With these camps, it started off as basketball development, but you’ve seen that really become something that has really grown even bigger. I saw Pascal (Siakam)<\/a>, I saw (Joel) Embiid<\/a>, I saw all these guys as youth in camps. Seeing them as 15-, 16-year-old kids in camp, you can’t even project. And that tells you how much talent we have on the continent. I always say Africa’s biggest jewel is the talent of the youth. One out of every four people in the world are going to be Africans by the year 2050 and the median age is 20. We should be investing on the continent.<\/p>\n

Q: How does Giants of Africa use sports to get the youth to consider different careers?<\/p>\n

A: I’m the prime example of that. I didn’t play in the NBA. I didn’t even play high-level college or high-level Europe. The entry point for me was a scout in the NBA. From then on lots of people helped me to create this path that I’m on still. I go back to Basketball Without Borders<\/a>, when the NBA gave me the opportunity to be a director. That has led to me becoming an executive in the NBA. That’s the example I want to give.<\/p>\n

That’s why we have so many people coming to this festival to really show these kids \u2014 whether it’s me or a journalist or a sports doctor or sports lawyer \u2014 there’s so many careers. And the start is sports and doing it passionately and doing it well.<\/p>\n

\"Philanthropy<\/p>\n

FILE – Masai Ujiri, Toronto Raptors President, left, presents T-Shirts to Prince Harry, right, and Meghan, center, during a basketball clinic hosted by the Giants of Africa Foundation in Lagos Nigeria, May 12, 2024.<\/p>\n

Sunday Alamba – AP<\/p>\n

Q: How did women’s empowerment become a focus for the foundation’s work?<\/p>\n

A: When I first started, I was doing boys camps. Not every kid is going to make it to the NBA. So we started focusing on life skills. That was teaching respect, honesty, being on time. One of the big focuses was respect for women.<\/p>\n

So, I’m challenging these boys but I’m not challenging myself. I can’t say \u201cwomen’s empowerment\u201d and \u201crespect women\u201d and just do these camps for boys. So, we introduced the girls. And it’s not 50 boys and 10 girls just for token. It’s equality. They all have a basketball and they have the same court time. We can’t just say it. We actually have to do it.<\/p>\n

Q: What does your recent Toronto Raptors departure mean for your humanitarian work?<\/p>\n

A: Job, no job, wherever I am, whatever kind of job I’m doing, Giants of Africa is key. The focus will always be that just because I owe it to the youth of the continent. I owe it to the continent. My goal is not how big does Giants of Africa get. I look at it as: how big are these youth going to become? They’ll go on to do other things. They could go on to become a president or become a governor or become president of a team. The hope is that this experience here will even make them reimagine many of the things that they want to do. So, Giants of Africa will never go anywhere.<\/p>\n

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP\u2019s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n

Get in the game with our Prep Sports Newsletter<\/p>\n

Sent weekly directly to your inbox!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Masai Ujiri’s July is shaping up to be quite the rollercoaster ride. The recently-fired former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[32791,7,3025,7775,28359,448,7776,32792,6,446,1220,9574,681,66,680,476,3820,2720,447,14495],"class_list":{"0":"post-180302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-raptors","8":"tag-apmediaapi","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-dcc","12":"tag-fairs-and-festivals","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-lee-national","15":"tag-masai-ujiri-toronto-raptors-kawhi-leonard-giants-of-africa","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-nba-basketball","18":"tag-nba-finals","19":"tag-philanthropy","20":"tag-raptors","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-toronto","23":"tag-toronto-raptors","24":"tag-torontoraptors","25":"tag-wire","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-youth-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114877111199890416","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}