Dakar opens the Youth Olympic Games, and an Olympic event is held on African soil for the first time in 130 years

The signs across Dakar read "Africa Welcomes, Dakar Celebrates," and on Saturday the welcome became official. The fourth Summer Youth Olympic Games opened in Senegal with an evening ceremony in Diamniadio, the developing city near the capital where the main stadium stands. No Olympic event, summer or winter, youth or senior, had ever been held on African soil before. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye made the point at a sport and development summit on Saturday before the ceremony. "Today it's not just a nation that is welcoming the Youth Olympic Games; it's an entire continent that is opening its arms," he said. He noted that 130 years of Olympic history had passed before the Olympic flame finally reached African soil.

The competition runs through November 13 across eight venues in three places: Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly, a beach town about 80 kilometres from the capital. About 2,665 athletes aged 14 to 17 will contest 25 sports and 153 medal events, from athletics and swimming to beach wrestling, rugby sevens and breaking. Senegal fields 136 athletes of its own, and about 6,000 local volunteers are working the Games. International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry, a former Olympic swimming champion from Zimbabwe, described the event as an opportunity to demonstrate Africa's capabilities to the world, and said every African nation has committed to showing the Games, with live broadcasts in more than 30 countries.

Two returns give the opening its political edge. Russian athletes are competing under their national flag and colours at an Olympic event for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, after the IOC lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee in July. The Russian committee says 13 athletes have come, with 10 coaches. The Games also field a refugee Olympic team for the first time at youth level, made up mostly of athletes based in Africa. Back home, the celebration sits next to the same pressures driving young people into the streets elsewhere this autumn. Many Senegalese told reporters they are more concerned with the cost of living, unemployment and economic hardship than with the Games, and Senegal's government has committed at least 60 million dollars to staging them, with loans for long term sports infrastructure reported around 90 million dollars. Prime Minister Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo told AFP this week that once the Games begin, Dakar becomes the capital of African youth. For the next two weeks, in sporting terms at least, he is right. South Africa has already entered the race to host the 2036 Summer Olympics, which would make it the first African country to hold the senior Games. Dakar is the continent's proof that it can run one.