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

With his 7ft 2in (2.18m) stature and 22ft height, Mutombo certainly stood out and his distinct, gravelly voice made him a man who demanded attention when he spoke.

Mutombo was born in Kinshasa in June 1966 and moved to the United States in 1987 to study medicine at Georgetown University. However, he eventually changed his studies to concentrate on his young basketball career.

Mutombo's charitable work, described by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver as “thoroughly humanitarian,” began during his playing days with the founding of the foundation that bore his name in Atlanta in 1997.

His move to the city last 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 bought school buses and shipped them to the Congo and talked about how unstable the country was because of the civil war, especially the medical facilities,” Babcock told the New York Times.

Mutombo paid for the uniforms and expenses for his country's women's basketball team during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but the main project he helped finance was a hospital in his home country.

He invested around $15 million (£11.3 million) of his own money in the $29 million (£21.9 million) construction and furnishing of the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named after his late mother, in 2007 He also invested in an educational institute named after his father Samuel in the town of Mbuji-Mayi.