Next season BYU Basketball will have 3 players on the team from Africa: Gideon George (Nigeria), Fousseyni Traore (Mali), Atiki Ally Atiki (Tanzania). What a remarkable, beautiful, and incredible development for the Cougar basketball program. I believe this very well could be just the beginning of BYU building a pipeline with African recruits, similar to St. Mary's history with Australian players. I couldn't be more excited about this possibility.

Having a pipeline of players from Africa makes a ton of sense for BYU, especially given the great expansion of the church on the continent of Africa. According to the church newsroom Africa is the fastest growing area in the world for church membership. To put the growth into perspective: in 1978 there were just over 7,000 Latter-Day Saints in all of Africa. Entering 2015 that number was over 448,000. And just 4 years later in 2019 the church reported membership had grown to over 621,000. Church membership in Africa is likely to have eclipsed 700,000 entering 2021.

Currently in Africa there are over 2,200 congregations, 34 missions, 329 family history centers, and 3 temples (with 5 more temples under construction or announced).

The church is likely to continue it's massive growth in Africa for many years to come. I believe we will see a day in the near future where there will be several million Latter-Day Saints in Africa.

While none of these 3 BYU players from Africa are LDS, I believe the church expansion into Africa is relevant and no doubt came up in recruiting conversations with these players. I believe that relevance will only grow in the coming years and present BYU basketball with more and more opportunities to build a long term pipeline. I believe we are witnessing significant, ground breaking history occurring with the BYU basketball program right now under Mark Pope... and this is only the beginning.