Africa stages its first Olympic competition as Senegal opens Youth Games

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Africa hosts its first Youth Olympic Games and they are set to open with fanfare in Senegal independent.co.uk

Senegal opens the Youth Olympic Games on Saturday, the first Olympic competition ever staged on African soil. Around 2,700 athletes aged 14 to 17 will contest 153 medal events in 25 sports across Dakar, the nearby city of Diamniadio and the beach resort of Saly until 13 November, with President Bassirou Diomaye Faye declaring the Games open at the Diamniadio stadium before the IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, and several heads of state.

The modern Games are 130 years old; what the continent has been awarded is the junior edition. South Africa staged Africa's first football World Cup in 2010, Morocco co-hosts the 2030 edition with Spain and Portugal, Rwanda held the continent's first road cycling world championships last year and is due a Formula 1 grand prix early next decade, and Botswana staged the World Athletics Relays in May. Frédéric Sohoundé, a Dakar-based sports analyst, says African governments increasingly treat sport as a 'weapon in diplomacy and a tool for development' — on condition, he adds, that Senegal secures maintenance funding and regular events afterwards, so the new venues do not become unused facilities.

Senegal was awarded these Games for 2022; the pandemic pushed them back four years. The programme carries its own economy. Baseball5, a five-a-side version of baseball played without bats or gloves, debuts alongside the Chinese martial art wushu, coastal rowing beach sprints and beach wrestling. The first refugee team in Youth Olympic history fields six athletes based in Kenya and Uganda, in track and field, judo and taekwondo. Coventry, a Zimbabwean swimming champion, is the first African and first woman to lead the IOC; the actor Omar Sy and the TikTok star Khaby Lame are Games ambassadors, and the mascot, Ayo, is a young lion in a traditional Fulani hat whose name means joy in Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria and neighbouring countries.

Russia's delegation of 13 competes under its national flag for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to its suspension. In Paris in 2024, and at this year's Winter Games, its athletes appeared as neutrals without national symbols.