South Sudan’s basketball stars | The Week

When South Sudan’s basketball team qualified for the Paris Olympics 2024, “it instilled renewed hope and confidence in the people of Africa’s youngest country”, said Semafor.

Their history was “defined by conflict” and one of the longest civil wars on record, said BBC Sport Africa. But South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011, is “forging a new identity through basketball”. The world’s youngest sovereign state now exports “world-class players” to America’s National Basketball Association (NBA) – like two-time NBA All-Star Luol Deng, a refugee who went on to represent Great Britain in the London 2012 Olympics.