NBA Africa CEO Clare Akamanzi.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), NBA Africa and education nonprofit Learn Fresh have announced a partnership to expand NBA Math Hoops, a basketball‑based learning programme designed to close maths proficiency gaps among young people.
The announcement was made at the AWS Summit at Gallagher Estate in Midrand on Wednesday, 19 August 2026.
Initiative
The initiative will reach 1,000 students in South Africa and scale to 10,000 across five African countries by 2027, using real NBA and WNBA statistics to teach algebra, problem‑solving and critical thinking.
With UNESCO estimating that nearly 90% of children aged 6–14 in Sub‑Saharan Africa are not achieving minimum numeracy proficiency, AWS will provide AI and cloud infrastructure to personalise learning, localise content into multiple languages, and track outcomes.
Tournaments
Students will compete in tournaments linked to the Basketball Africa League Finals by 2030, while educators undergo structured training supported by AWS digital tools.
“AWS exists to help organisations build solutions that improve lives, and NBA Math Hoops is exactly the kind of programme we want to see succeed,” said Francessca Vasquez, AWS Vice President of Frontier AI Engineering and Services.
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NBA
NBA Africa CEO Clare Akamanzi added: “Through NBA Math Hoops, young people develop critical skills by engaging with the game they love. Our collaboration with AWS and Learn Fresh will help us bring this impactful programme to thousands more students.”
The partnership forms part of AWS’s broader Education Equity Initiative, a $100 million commitment to underserved learners worldwide. It also reflects AWS’s growing role in embedding engineers directly inside customer teams through its Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organisation.
NFL
Already working with the NBA, Ricoh, Cox Automotive and the NFL, AWS FDE has helped launch new fan‑facing products such as NFL Fantasy AI and NFL IQ, enabling millions of fans to interact with football data in new ways.
“The NFL has millions of fans who want to consume football content throughout the year, including the offseason. We innovate at the pace and scale needed to meet the high expectations of our fans,” said Gary Brantley, Chief Information Officer of the National Football League.
“Together, we created new fan‑facing products like NFL Fantasy AI and NFL IQ that allow fans to interact with NFL data like never before. The engagement from fans and broadcasters was measurable from day one and was made possible by AWS’s delivery model.”
Sport and tech
By combining sport, technology and education, AWS is positioning itself as a force for innovation across industries – from classrooms in Johannesburg to stadiums in New York – with AI and cloud solutions designed to scale, personalise and transform experiences.
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