NBA hall of famer Dikembe Mutombo — Mt. Mutombo, the man with the resounding and everlasting finger wag — passed away on the final day of September, leading to an outpouring of support within the sports community and well beyond. Though I grew up in a staunch Jordan household, I noticed my Nigerian father always quietly beaming whenever Mutombo, born and raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, took the floor.
I reached out in the hopes of speaking with him last year, only to find out the sad news that he was dealing with a brain tumor, to which he finally succumbed at age 58 on September 30.
Away from the court, Mutombo’s accolades as a philanthropist and civic leader might be just as impressive, if not more. He created the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation (DMF) in 1997, just six years after he joined the NBA, with a powerful focus on healthcare, health policy, and medical research for people of the Congo. Here’s a look at Mutombo’s philanthropic legacy, including his global health work, focused on the country of his birth, as well as his inspirational role for others in the league.
Giving back in the DRC
In 1987, Mutombo came to the United States to attend Georgetown University to study medicine in the hopes of eventually returning to his country to apply those skills. But with his incredible size, he was recruited by legendary coach John Thompson, who convinced him to play for the Hoyas. Once he joined the NBA, it wasn’t long before Mutombo started giving back.
During his prime playing years with the Atlanta Hawks from 1996 to 2001, the 7’ 2” center started the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, of which he served as president and CEO. The foundation operated as a public charity before its 2022 dissolution.
DMF had three staff members, including Mutombo. Susan Johnson, a trained lawyer and nonprofit executive, who worked as DMF’s executive director for nearly 25 years, tells me she was referred to the job by an attorney she worked with. During her initial interview, Mutombo was also on the phone, even though he had an upcoming game with the Toronto Raptors.
And after she met Mutombo in person, it wasn’t long before she signed on. “He asked me, ‘Will you help me build my hospital?’ Just like that. Before I knew it, I was saying, ‘Yes, I’ll help you.’”
Starting at the foundation in 1998, Johnson calls those early days a huge challenge, as the team dove into fundraising, a public awareness campaign and pulling in the philanthropic funds needed to build the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named in honor of Mutombo’s mother, in the DRC’s capital city of Kinshasa. Johnson says she quickly realized that it’s much easier to get donors to support programs than to back massive brick-and-mortar projects.
Mutombo had already committed $15 million of his own funds and kept his foundation lean so that all money could go toward impact. He ultimately committed a total of $23 million to build the hospital, with another $6 million raised by Johnson. The facility opened its doors in December 2007 with over 300 medical professionals — the first new hospital of its kind to be opened in the DRC in 45 years, Johnson said.
“Patients started coming. No one was turned away for an inability to pay… it was located in one of the poorest quadrants in the capital city.” Johnson said.
According to the NIH, over the next 20 years, the growing proportion of cancer cases in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will account for an estimated 70% of all cancers diagnosed. Through the years, the hospital has treated close to 1 million men, women and children.
DMF also tapped international volunteer doctors to do certain procedures, with Johnson helping bring in the Starkey Hearing Foundation, which did a hearing aid mission, or CNN-featured Namibian doctor Helena Ndume, who did cataract surgery in a country where, at the time, people thought going blind from cataracts was an inevitability. The hospital was also the first to do knee replacements in the DRC.
In 2015, the foundation started to focus on cervical cancer, bringing in Groesbeck Parham, CEO of Friends of Africa Inc., an organization of Black American cancer surgeons who work in some of the world’s poorest countries, training doctors and nurses how to detect and surgically treat women’s cancers.
Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital expected only a few hundred women would show up to the initial cancer screening — but some 8,000 did. And since, hospital staff have screened some 20,000 patients for cervical cancer, per Johnson.
DMF also opened the Samuel Mutombo Institute for Science & Entrepreneurship in 2021. The school, which has since shuttered, educated hundreds of students, regardless of income, in the ancestral village of Mutombo’s parents.
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“You paved the way”
Beyond his work in global health, Mutombo was also a great advocate for basketball, especially around expanding the sport. Mutombo paid for the DRC women’s basketball team’s trip to the 1996 Summer Olympics games in Atlanta; he also picked up the tab for the track team’s uniforms and expenses. He was the first youth emissary for the United Nations Development Program and he also served on the advisory board for the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health, which works in global health research.
Mutombo was also involved with a polio eradication campaign, to curb a virus that was endemic in the DRC. Johnson recalls traveling in boats with Mutombo along the Congo River to remote villages to find children who had not been immunized but also could not travel to a medical facility to receive the vaccine. After the campaign, there were no traces of wild polio virus in the country, according to Johnson. “Fifty thousand vaccinators were on the ground to vaccinate children against polio. And Dikembe led the effort,” she added.
In 2009, David Stern, former NBA commissioner, appointed Mutombo as the first NBA Global Ambassador, where he worked to grow and celebrate the game of basketball through international sporting events while working with NBA Cares to bring attention to important social issues.
Ultimately, those who knew Mutombo say he saw basketball as a vehicle that allowed him to do everything else he cared about. Mutombo told CBS Mornings that when Stern started NBA Cares, the NBA’s social responsibility program, in 2005, Mutombo doubled down on his charitable work. “We have to make this thing global… our players have to go where the game is being played, the game is being watched,” he said.
A new generation of NBA athletes has followed in Mutombo’s footsteps, including Serge Ibaka and Bismack Biyombo, both from Congo, as well as Bol Bol, who was also inspired by his father, the late Manute Bol of Sudan. “You paved the way for myself and for many Congolese and African youth with your legendary basketball career and charitable actions. You are an African icon that will inspire the many coming generations. Rest In Peace Dikembe Mutombo,” Ibaka wrote on his Instagram.
As we’ve seen over the years, NBA athletes have been a powerful source of both philanthropic dollars and charitable inspiration for fellow players and fans. Meanwhile, another philanthropy associated with the NBA, the NBA Foundation, pledged an initial $300 million in 2020, to be given away over the next decade toward economic opportunity and empowerment in the Black community — with a particular focus on job readiness, skills training, job placement and career advancement for Black youth ages 14 to 24.
Remembering a “true humanitarian”
Held over the weekend, Mutombo’s funeral pulled in the likes of current NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Nigerian NBA legend Hakeem Olajuwon, and former President Bill Clinton, who gave a speech at the funeral. Mutombo’s relationship with the Clintons goes back decades and Hillary Clinton once visited Mutombo’s hospital. Cindy McCain, meanwhile, once linked up with Mutombo to do a food program at a refugee camp in Kenya — a testament to how the star connected with people across political lines.
“My dear friend Dikembe Mutombo passed away today of brain cancer. I knew him as a true humanitarian. Here we are together in a refugee camp trying to help those who could not help themselves. I will love and miss him terribly,” McCain wrote on X.
Mutombo’s edict was to improve the health, education and quality of life for the people of his native Congo. When Ed Bradley of “60 Minutes” went to the DRC with Mutombo to visit a struggling village, Mutombo gave insight into his lifelong work: “No matter whatever you do in your life, your heart stays here,” he said at the time.
Johnson also recalled an African proverb Mutombo would repeat to her: “When you take the elevator to go up, please make sure you send it back down so that someone else can take it up.”
Looking ahead, Mutombo’s wife, Rose Mutombo, as well as their seven children, will likely be involved as the family’s philanthropy shifts to its next chapter. Son Ryan Mutombo may follow in his father’s NBA footsteps. Several Mutombo children are adopted, a cause that could be a philanthropic interest to wade into down the line, as well. Johnson noted how their connection to the DRC, as is true of any immigrant family, is different than Mutombo’s, though some of the children even volunteered with the foundation. “There’s definitely possibilities,” she said.
