Dikembe Mutombo: Africa’s NBA giant with a ‘heart of gold’

With his 7ft 2in (2.18m) frame and size 22 feet, Mutombo certainly stood out and his pronounced, gravelly voice meant he was a man who demanded attention when he spoke.

Born in Kinshasa in June 1966, Mutombo moved to the United States in 1987 to study medicine at Georgetown University, but eventually switched courses to concentrate on his fledgling basketball career.

Described as a “humanitarian at his core” by NBA commissioner Adam Silver, Mutombo’s charitable work began during his playing days with the formation of the foundation bearing his name in Atlanta in 1997.

His move to the city the previous year, when he joined the Atlanta Hawks, proved to be a pivotal moment according to former Hawks general manager Pete Babcock.

“That first summer we signed him, he was buying school buses and shipping them to the Congo, and talking about how unstable the country was due to civil strife, especially the medical facilities,” Babcock told the New York Times.

Mutombo paid for uniforms and expenses for his country’s women’s basketball team during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, but the main project which he helped fund was a hospital in his homeland.

He invested around $15m (£11.3m) of his own money in the $29m (£21.9m) construction and equipping of the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named after his late mother, opened in the city of his birth in 2007, while also investing in an educational institute named after his father, Samuel, in the city of Mbuji-Mayi.

ADVERTISEMENT