PLAY, LEARN, RISE

Amadou Gallo Fall with SEED Academy Girls who were first admitted to the programme in 2014, a decade after the boys.

On the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Amadou Gallo Fall’s iconic SEED Academy, Fifth Chukker Magazine drops in on the Senegal campus.

Lilby Skaz

The Sports for Education and Economic Development (SEED) Academy is located within the government-owned National Centre of Physical and Sporting Education (CNEPS) in Theis, a regional capital and the third largest town in Senegal with a large student population diffused in the city’s university, polytechnic and several other institutions.The SEED academy students do easily stand out, distinguishable by their gangling frames - after all basketball is at the core of its curriculum, a sport it repurposed with academic tutoring and dynamic life skills lessons to develop, inspire, empower and equip young people with the acquirement they need to succeed in life.

The SEED academy was established in 2002 by Amadou Gallo Fall, the former college basketball star, vice president of the US National Basketball Association and now President of NBA affiliate Basketball Africa League, who rightfully considers himself the quintessential manifestation of the intersectionality of basketball, education and upward mobility from very humble beginnings. “ If I could do this for you, you too can put yourself in the position to do something for others”, Fall would routinely exhort his students.

As the first basketball student-athlete academy in Africa SEED admits 20 boys and 20 girls (since 2014) aged 14-18 every year from across Senegal. They get full scholarships to live, train and work towards achieving their goal of graduating from high school and matriculating to university, or securing a quality job upon leaving the programme. Many of the graduates leverage their athletic talents and secure university scholarships at some of the top institutions around the world. The boys board on campus while the girls are accommodated in town, just moving into a newly refurbished white stucco duplex a week before we showed up.

To commemorate SEED’s 20th anniversary we dropped in on the academy for an interactive jaunt. Our first contact was of course the General Manager Mr. Pene el Kabir, an ex basketball professional who had been mentored by Fall whilst playing in France and later headhunted for the job in October 2021. Kabir’s every other sentence tended to finish with “Amadou Fall is just an amazing guy,” a gospel espoused by his fellow crew members. He was joined by the communications manager Ms Fatou Konare and the technical director Mr. Ousmane Faye as they ran us through the essence of the SEED Project, its vision for the future - complete with futuristic architectural renditions - and its primary components: The SEED Academy Boys, The SEED Academy Girls, SEED Rise, SEED Elite etc.

At the auditorium Mr. Moustapha Mbow, Amadou Fall’s roommate for two years at the University of Dakar before he took off to Tunisia in pursuit of his basketball/academic dream just finished his basketball clinic tutorial where the case study for his power pep talk to the students was the grit of the Nigerian basketball team. Papa Malick Rachied also stepped in for his Life skills lessons, another cornerstone of the curriculum. Around the campus we also interacted with senior academy coach Joe da Silva, Ibrahim Ndiaye, the assistant operations manager and Adama Ciss, the assistant accountant. The trio are some of the illustrious alumni who have come back to work for the academy.

In the restaurant we noticed a group of English-speaking students and it turned out Daniel, Liberty, Ezeikiel and Mabil were Nigerian, Zimbabwean and South Sudanese in the NBA Africa Academy, the elite student-athlete development programme for high school boys from across the continent. Launched in 2017, the academy’s daily programming include tuition, English language classes, high performance basketball training, grade monitoring, college placement support and undergraduate opportunities in the U.S., Africa, Europe and Canada. “We feel really privileged and grateful to be part of this programme as we couldn’t wish for a better pathway to achieving our ambition,” said Nigeria’s Liberty, spinning a wide grin that modulated his arresting 6’ 8” frame.

Back at the gym, the late afternoon slot belonged to SEED Rise, an after-school youth development programme for 1050 boys and girls aged 5 - 12. Rise offers basketball clinics, academic coaching and life skills lessons. Each pupil’s primary goal is to stay on track to be promoted to the next grade in school and, ultimately, to graduate high school and matriculate to university.

Abdulkarim Gueye, the principal instructor and his assistant Khouredia Diop were already rallying the children for the commencement of their regimen when Mamphatu Kone hurriedly ushered her three children into the gym just in time. “You can imagine how hectic it can get juggling multiple chores and obligations” She said, throwing up her hands almost apologetically. Late-coming is a no-no at SEED.

The SEED Project is funded privately by Fall who was challenged from the onset to promote strategic and accountable philanthropy in building a new model of giving back that enhances and compliments conventional charity. By leveraging his Global network of friends, affluent individuals, grant-making foundations and socially responsible corporations, he was able to create a sustainable partnership across public, private and social

Above: Pupils of SEED Rise, an after-school youth development programme for boys and girls aged 5 - 12. Below: SEED Academy students in a tutorial class.

sectors to fund his NGO to the level of hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

After twenty years SEED weighs in with a stellar record of accomplishments across the board. 92% of its graduates have either matriculated to university or secured a job upon leaving the programme. Since 2006, academy students have earned more than $10m in scholarship funding to attend high schools and universities in Africa, Europe and the United States. The academy has also produced 2 NBA players including former New York Knicks center Mouhamed Saer Sene, and another 6 graduates in NBA affiliated leagues and 60 U.S. college basketball student-athletes. More than 32 graduates play professional basketball in 16 different countries while 352 coaches from West Africa have also received training in SEED’s life skills and basketball curriculum. Notably, several hundred alumni currently working or studying in 16 countries provide career services and job placement support for SEED graduates around the world.

“We are very proud of all the guys making the best of opportunities for themselves and their schools, and having a bright outlook on what’s really important, and that’s earning their degree,” Amadou said. “The most important thing is that they continue to inspire young people across the continent, not just at the academy, not just in Senegal. It’s Nigeria and Cameroon and across Africa.”

All of this success certainly comes back to the leadership philosophy of Amadou who sets the SEED vision, values and ideology around the humble basketball. Elements of the game are tooled for practical real life resonance. For instance (1): The Dribble interprets as Personal Commitment of not losing the ball in basketball; outside it is executed as a personal commitment to becoming a model citizen. (2): The pass construes as collective commitment of sharing the ball with partners; outside basketball it equates to being useful to your community. And (3): The almighty shot certainly connotes self-confidence in basketball; outside of the court it correlates to expressing yourself with clarity and speaking with confidence.

The list goes on and the methodology has been inculcated to the level of a creed which Aminat and Isha, the first two students we encountered on our visit, instinctively and gleefully recited to us like a druidic incantation.

In the next decade the SEED Academy would have moved to its swanky new permanent site and its offshoots well rooted in many more countries beyond Gambia, Gabon, the US. and Rwanda as of today. Amadou Gallo Fall most likely will still be the godfather of African basketball and the SEED Project with its ever increasing faculties would have become Africa’s first multinational NGO conglomerate.

What is it and what can we learn from it?

Yasemen Kaner-White

{bil o l hackl ing}

{noun} plural noun biohackings

Biohacking could be called do-it-yourself biology. A trend also known as garage biology or amateur genetic engineering. The idea of biohacking is that people feel able to follow their curiosity and really get to the bottom of something they want to understand. A buzzword that unites the hi-tech, wellness, anti-ageing and science communities; at its most basic, it means doing things to your body or mind to help them function better.

Biohacking is optimising the environment inside and outside of your body. It is about controlling your biology to be the best possible version of yourself.

The food we eat, the music we listen to, the things we read and the people we spend time with, all shape us. Biohacking is recognising the impact of what we consume, so we can carefully curate it for our own benefit.

The more research I’ve done into biohacking and talking with key experts, I realised I’ve been biohacking all along. Being someone who is intuition led, I give in to monthly hormonal cravings of iron rich food like dark chocolate, knowing it’s good for me too. It doesn’t mean I don’t think about a bag of triple chocolate cookies. However, from research I know a few squares of quality dark chocolate delivers the needed iron and serotonin and preferable to refined sugar and carbs from cookies, causing blood sugar spikes and potential weight gain. Therefore, I combine intuition with knowledge.

No man is an island, and expert advice is beneficial, including medical, technological, nootropic supplementation, personal training, scientific, and naturopathic - the important thing is a holistic approach. Listening to it all and acting on what makes sense to you. When I spoke with Tim Gray, the UK’s leading biohacker and founder of the Health Optimisation Summit, he summed it up nicely, “as a biohacker we have a tool belt with all the information on it”. A visual way of saying diverse knowledge is power to arm us.