Uganda set for 2019 FIBA World Cup  qualifiers

Uganda's Silverbacks will be one of the African basketball teams to play the first round tournament of the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup African qualifiers next year in Bamako, Mali.

This follows the announcement made by FIBA Africa on Wednesday.

According to FIBA, Bamako (Mali) and Maputo (Mozambique) will be the two cities to host Groups B and D of the African Qualifiers respectively. The two First Round tournaments are set to run from February 23-25, 2018.

The Malian capital Bamako will host Group B that consists of Mali, Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda while in Group D, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, the Central African Republic and Mozambique will face off in Maputo.

The top-three teams from each group will advance to the decisive 12-team round of the qualifiers, which will see national teams (in two groups of six) play home-and-away games over another three-window period and the top two teams from each group will then qualify for  the World Cup.

The seven other African teams that missed out on qualifying directly will then take part in a new 16-team competition called the FIBA-Afrocan to be played in the summer of 2019.

Games in Groups A and C took place last weekend in Yaounde and Luanda respectively. Tunisia, Cameroon and Chad qualified for the second round from Group A while Angola, Egypt and Morocco advanced from Group C.

Under FIBA's new competition system, Africa will for the first time qualify five teams to the World Cup that will be hosted by China from August 31  to September 15, 2019.