Senegal opened the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar on Saturday, the first time any Olympic event has been held on African soil. Since the modern Games began in 1896, no Summer Olympics has ever been awarded to the continent.
Nearly 2,700 athletes aged 14 to 17, from more than 200 national Olympic committees, are competing through Nov. 13 across three host zones: Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly. More than 6,000 volunteers are working the Games. A refugee team made up of athletes based in Africa is part of the Youth Games for the first time.
The International Olympic Committee’s president, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, who in 2025 became the first African to lead the body, said before the opening:”It’s here. We are so happy. This has been a long time in the making.”
It was also a long wait for the host. Dakar was awarded the 2022 Youth Games, which were postponed four years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizers still had to scramble with last-minute energy and rainfall problems, and Senegal’s organizing committee president, Mamadou Diagna Ndiaye, said he wanted the Games to let young athletes “meet, exchange experiences and build friendships beyond the competition.”
The Youth Games are not the Olympics. They are a smaller event for teenagers, and Africa still has not hosted the senior Games. That is the point worth keeping hold of. For Black athletes and fans across the continent and the diaspora, from Lagos to Toronto to Houston, the Olympic story has been told almost entirely from somewhere else, with African runners, boxers and swimmers flying out to compete in other people’s stadiums. This fortnight, teenagers from across the continent are doing it at home.
The next test is the real one. South Africa has named Durban as its candidate for the 2036 or 2040 Summer Games. If the IOC means what it said in Dakar, it should now treat that bid as a serious one rather than a courtesy. The Games run until Nov. 13.
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