Lupita Nyong'o Buys Into Kenyan Basketball's Biggest Success Story

Lupita Nyong'o celebrated her newest role with a walk through a basketball arena tunnel. The Oscar winner announced Thursday that she's an investor in the Nairobi City Thunder, the first Kenyan team to play in the Basketball Africa League.

She said on Instagram that she's proud to back the club, and gave a nod to the Kenyan league finals starting this weekend.

The club goes back to 1998 and has been called Nairobi City Thunder since 2010. The turn came in 2023, when Twende Sports Limited bought it. In 2025 it became the first Kenyan side in the BAL, the league run by the NBA and FIBA, and it qualified again this year. In the national finals it faces Kenya Ports Authority for the third year in a row, having won the last two comfortably.

It's a good time to get in. The BAL switches to a franchise model in 2027, with permanent places and only a few spots left for teams to qualify into.

Nyong'o holds Kenyan, Mexican and U.S. citizenship, and her father, Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, is governor of Kisumu County. She won her Oscar for 12 Years a Slave and has since starred in Black Panther, Us and The Odyssey.