Senegal makes history by becoming the first African country to host an Olympic event.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd Al Jazeera on GoogleinfoA man runs past a mural of Dakar 2026 as Senegal prepares to host the Youth Olympic Games, the first Olympic event to be held in Africa, in Dakar [Misper Apawu/Reuters]By Nicolas HaquePublished On 31 Oct 202631 Oct 2026Dakar, Senegal – Senegal’s teenage volleyball players were training, giving everything they had. And I could see it in their eyes: the flame, that desire to win.
I was with my daughter and could see the effect it had on her: watching another girl her age play for a team, for a chance at gold, for something bigger than herself.
I saw it again when my daughter helped a young boxer wrap her hands, before the fighter slipped on her gloves and threw a punch few adults could withstand, and when she helped a rowing captain into the water.
There is an ease with which teenagers find one another, a friendliness adults seem to have forgotten.
And so the 2026 Youth Olympic Games opening on the world’s youngest continent on Saturday feels fitting, particularly in this sports-crazy city I call home.
Surfers paddle out at dawn. Children play basketball and football in the streets. Teenagers wrestle on beaches; others swim towards Ngor Island at breakneck speed. Construction workers, after a day’s labour, gather not in pubs or bars, but on the beach – to train, laugh and listen to music.
For many in Dakar, visas and money make travel beyond their borders difficult. This time the world has come to them.
The Games were supposed to take place in 2022. Then came COVID-19, and Senegal’s then-president, Macky Sall, asked for more time to prepare. The Olympics would have to wait four years.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Kirsty Coventry, the Zimbabwean former swimmer and Olympic gold medallist who now leads the International Olympic Committee, described it as a chance for Dakar, Senegal and Africa “to actually show what we’re capable of” – not merely tell the world.
Billions of dollars of previously undisclosed debt have brought repeated credit downgrades, and the government is negotiating with creditors and the International Monetary Fund.
In a country where money is scarce, the question of what it costs to welcome the world cannot be separated from what the Games will leave behind.
Dakar can feel half built, its concrete exposed, its roads unfinished. Yet the city has done what it can with what it has. Christmas lights have become Olympic rings; and empty water bottles painted in the colours of visiting nations line roads leading towards refurbished venues.
“No,” she replied. The movement, she explained, needed to make the Games less complex and more affordable, using existing venues rather than demanding new ones.
Despite Senegal’s debt and political turmoil, the land of teranga, of hospitality, is ready to welcome some 2,700 athletes and their parents, coaches and supporters. Some have never been to Africa. Expectations are being tested, sometimes quietly, in encounters no opening ceremony could arrange.
