Rwandan international basketball referee Didier Gaga is among 10 match officials selected to handle Basketball Africa League (BAL) 2024 regular season games in the Kalahari Conference. The Kalahari Conference group phase, the first of its kind, will take place at SunBet Arena in Pretoria, South Africa, from Saturday, March 9 and will run through March 17. Gaga, 41, will depart for Pretoria on Wednesday, March 6, three days before the regular season tips off. It will be his third season officiating at the African club basketball showpiece since its inception in 2021. According to the breakdown, the 12 teams have been divided into three conferences comprising four teams each. ALSO READ: BAL 2024: APR, US Monastir drawn in Sahara Conference Every conference will have a 12-game group phase during which each team will face the other three teams in its conference twice. ALSO READ: BAL2024: Conference games get underway on March 9 Besides the Kalahari Conference, the Nile Conference group phase will take place from Friday, April 19-27 at Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex in Cairo, Egypt while the Sahara Conference games are scheduled to take place Dakar Arena, Senegal, from May 4-12 ALSO READ: Amadou Gallo Fall on preps for BAL season four The inaugural Kalahari Conference comprises home team Cape Town Tigers (South Africa), Dynamo Basketball Club (Burundi), FUS Rabat Basketball (Morocco) and Petro de Luanda (Angola). The Nile Conference comprises Al Ahly (Egypt), Al Ahly Tripoli (Libya), Bangui Sporting Club (Central African Republic) and City Oilers (Uganda) and the Sahara Conference will bring together debutants APR, 2022 champions US-Monastir, BAL 2023 runners-up AS Douanes and Rivers Hoopers. The top two teams from each conference and the top two third-placed teams across the three conferences will travel to Kigali for four seeding games followed by an eight-game, single-elimination playoffs and finals from May 24 through June 1. While Gaga will be officiating at the Kalahari Conference, another Rwandan referee Jean Sauveur Ruhamiriza will be handling matches at the Nile Conference regular season.
