The national U-16 basketball boys team enters residential training camp today at La Palisse hotel in Nyandungu ahead of the upcoming Zone V Championship set to be held in Kigali on May 25-26.

The tournament will act as a qualifier for the FIBA Afrobasket U-16 tournament which will be held in Mali in July, however, only Eritrea has confirmed to take part in the regional tourney.

Other Zone V countries like Burundi, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda communicated to the Rwanda Basketball Federation and FIBA-Africa indicating that they don’t have U-16 teams.

It means Rwanda will play two games against Eritrea in which the winner will qualify for the FIBA Afro basketball tournament.

"We are trying to make sure that we have the strongest team available because we have to win the upcoming Zone V Basketball championship,” said head coach Charles Mushumba. The U-16 girls’ team has already qualified for the tourney because all the invited teams pulled out of the tournament and the FIBA Afrobasket U-16 girls’ tournament will be staged in Madagascar from July 16-24.

Rwanda Basketball Federation has organized two friendly games for the girls team against PGB of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo next month.

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