Africa’s First Olympic Games, and Kenya’s Part in It

On 31 October 2026, the Olympic flame will be lit at the Diamniadio Olympic Stadium, half an hour outside Dakar. It will be the first time an Olympic Games of any kind has been staged in Africa.

The event is the fourth Summer Youth Olympic Games, for athletes aged 15 to 18. It runs until 13 November, across three zones in Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly, with about 2,700 athletes from more than 180 National Olympic Committees competing in 25 sports.

A continent with a long Olympic record

Africa has been at the Olympics for a century and has never hosted one. African athletes have competed at the Summer Games, the Winter Games, the Summer Youth Olympic Games and the Winter Youth Olympic Games. Kenya has competed at all four.

Kenya is the most successful African nation at the Summer Olympics. Since its debut in Melbourne in 1956, Kenya has sent 643 athletes to 16 Summer Games and won 124 medals: 39 gold, 45 silver and 40 bronze. All but seven came in athletics. The other seven came from the boxing ring.

The Winter record is smaller, though not for that reason slighter. Kenya is a tropical country with no winter sport tradition to build on, and it has still put a skier on the start line at five Winter Games: a cross country skier at Nagano 1998, Salt Lake City 2002 and Turin 2006, then Sabrina Simader in the alpine events at PyeongChang 2018, and one alpine skier again at Milano Cortina earlier this year.

Is Kenya the best at the Youth Olympics?

No, and the honest answer is more interesting than the flattering one.

Across the three Summer Youth Olympic Games held so far, Kenya has won 15 medals: 8 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze. That ranks Kenya 29th on the all-time table, a long way behind China and Russia, who have won 152 and 159 medals respectively.

Within Africa the picture depends on what is being counted. Kenya has won more Youth Olympic gold medals than any other African nation. Egypt has won more medals in total, 26 of them, and Ethiopia has won 21. Kenya is Africa’s leader on gold, not on volume.

Why Dakar

The IOC awarded the 2022 Youth Olympic Games to Dakar at its 133rd Session in Buenos Aires in October 2018. The vote was unanimous. The Games were then pushed back four years to 2026, part of the wider reshuffling of the Olympic calendar that followed the postponement of Tokyo 2020.

The motto, in French and Wolof, is ‘Africa Welcomes, Dakar Celebrates’.

Kenya at the Youth Olympics

Kenya has been present since the beginning. Ten athletes went to Singapore in 2010, competing in athletics, sailing and swimming. Twenty-four went to Nanjing in 2014, where the rugby sevens squad accounted for half the team and Evans Murutu Sikoto lifted in the weightlifting. Twenty went to Buenos Aires in 2018, including a nine-man hockey 5s side. That is 54 athletes in total.

Every one of Kenya’s 15 medals has come in athletics, and almost all on the track: the 3,000m, the 2,000m steeplechase, the 1,500m, the 1,000m, the 400m and the 400m hurdles. Singapore 2010 remains the best haul, with three gold and three bronze, including golds for Gladys Chesir, Peter Matheka Mutuku and Virginia Nyambura Nganga.

The more useful question is what happens afterwards. Six Kenyan Youth Olympians have gone on to a senior Olympic team. Edinah Jebitok ran the 1,500m at Tokyo 2020 after winning Youth Olympic gold in 2018. Jackline Chepkoech, who ran in Nanjing as a 16-year-old, contested the 3,000m steeplechase at Paris 2024. Maria Chantal Brunlehner swam the 50m freestyle in Paris, and Maureen Nyatichi Thomas ran in the 4 × 400m mixed relay. Sabrina Simader and Issa Gachingiri Laborde Dit Pere both made the step up on snow.

Preparing for Dakar

Kenya’s full team has not yet been named. Two things are already known.

In May 2026 the women’s beach handball team qualified through the global ranking, taking one of three African places alongside hosts Senegal and Tunisia. It will be Kenya’s first beach handball team at a Youth Olympic Games, and its first qualified team sport since the hockey 5s side of 2018.

In August, Nairobi hosted the ANOCA Zone 5 Youth Games, five days of competition from 24 to 28 August involving more than 300 athletes from 11 countries, staged in part as preparation for Dakar. Athletics, swimming, judo, cycling, tennis, 3×3 basketball and beach volleyball were on the programme.

What to watch

Kenya arrives in Dakar with 15 medals to its name, all of them in athletics, from a programme that now offers 25 sports. The beach handball qualification is the first evidence in eight years that the range can widen.

There is also the simple matter of geography. For the first time, Kenyan teenagers will compete at an Olympic Games without leaving the continent.