History of baseball in Africa

Africa was the last of the six major continents to develop baseball and was the last one to have produced a major league player, which happened in 2017 when Gift Ngoepe made his debut.

South Africa has been the continent's top baseball country, sending its national team to the 1974 Amateur World Series and many events since (most notably the 2000 Olympics and the first two World Baseball Classics). The Africa Baseball and Softball Association was formed in June 1990, though South Africa was not one of its first members surprisingly (Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Zimbabwe were).

The first African Baseball Cup was held in 1992 and baseball was first played in the All-Africa Games in 1999. South Africa has produced several minor leaguers in addition to Ngoepe, starting with Nick Dempsey in 1997, while Nigeria's Gbenga Olayemi made it to the minors in 2003. African prospects attended the MLB European Academy and briefly had their own African academy. African teams, particularly from Uganda, have also qualified for some editions of the Little League World Series.