SEED Project Appoints Former FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura as Board Chair

Fatma Diouf Samoura

Fatma Diouf Samoura, who left FIFA at the end of 2023 after seven years as the governing body's Secretary General, has been named Chair of the Board of Directors at Sport for Education and Economic Development (SEED) Project, the Senegal-based organisation that has used basketball to develop young African talent and leaders for more than two decades.

Samoura announced the appointment on LinkedIn, describing it as a continuation of her work in sport, youth development and African continent. The organisation's first Board meeting under her chairmanship was held on Friday, August 28, a session she described as laying the foundations for the priorities SEED Project intends to pursue over the coming years.

Transformation Plan: SEED Academy Reimagined 2025-2030

The appointment lands as SEED Project moves into what it calls SEED Academy Reimagined 2025-2030, a transformation plan touching governance, academic and athletic standards, student welfare, financing and expansion across the continent. SEED Project was founded by Amadou Gallo Fall in Thiès, Senegal, and its campus became the site of the NBA's first Academy Africa in 2017, pairing elite basketball training with a college-preparatory curriculum for teenage prospects from across the continent. Fall, now president of the Basketball Africa League and NBA Africa, remains the organisation's founder.

"I am honoured to join SEED Project as Chair of the Board of Directors," Samoura wrote, adding that the organisation's vision "to make sport a lever for education, development and leadership for African youth" was one to which she was "particularly attached." She thanked Fall "for his trust as well as all the members of the Board and the team for their welcome."

Samoura became FIFA's first female Secretary General in 2016 and left the role at the end of 2023 after seven years, having overseen the governing body's administration through two World Cup cycles. She was appointed an independent member of the FIA Senate, the governing body of world motorsport, in February 2022, a seat she held alongside her FIFA role and continues to hold today.

Basketball's as an institutions in Africa

Putting Samoura at the head of SEED Project's board gives the academy a chair with two decades of experience running a global sports institution is a great move. A five-year plan built around governance and sustainable financing is only as credible as the people signing off on it, and SEED Project has just added someone who spent years reporting to FIFA's Council on exactly those questions. It also deepens the overlap between basketball's institutions in Africa, where Fall's BAL and NBA Africa roles already carry weight with governments and broadcasters, and the continent's wider sports-diplomacy circuit, where Samoura is a known and trusted name. An academy trying to raise money and open doors across dozens of federations over the next five years, that combination matters.