Reigning champions Nigeria will face Mali in the Women’s AfroBasket final on Sunday at the Palais des Sports Treichville in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
The 2025 final will be a rematch of the 2021 title game which Nigeria won with a final score of 70-59.
The Nigerian team D’Tigress beat arch rivals Senegal 75-68 on Saturday to advance to the final for the fifth time in a row, while Mali defeated South Sudan 76-50 in the semifinals.
Nigeria had won Group D with a perfect 2–0 record, following victories over Mozambique and Rwandaz and then an 83–47 victory over Cameroon in the quarterfinals.
Mali also dominated their Group B with victories over South Sudan and Cameroon, and defeated Cameroon 86-68 In the quarterfinals.
With the semifinal victory against Senegal, Nigeria extended their Women’s AfroBasket winning streak to 28 games, dating back to October 2015 when they beat Angola in the third-place game in Yaounde, Cameroon.
The DTigress will be hoping to extend this winning streak with a historic win in the final. But they would have to dig deep again to surmount another archrival.
Since the 2011 tournament in Bamako, Nigeria and Mali have played each other six times. As hosts that year, Mali defeated Nigeria 71–62 in the semifinal.
Two years later, in Maputo, Mozambique, Mali defeated Nigeria twice – 78-45 in the group phase, and 57-50 in the fifth-place game.
Coach of DTigress Rena Wakama will also further etch her name in the history books by becoming the first woman to win back-to-back Women’s AfroBasket titles.
In 2023, months after she was appointed as head coach on a two-year contract, the 33-year-old became the first female coach to win an Afrobasket title, when DTigress triumphed in Kigali, Rwanda.
At the Paris Olympics, Wakama became the first coach to lead an African basketball team (men or women) to the quarter final of the Olympic Games.
