The head of Confederation of African Athletics, Hamad Kalkaba Malboum, has said the continent will bid to host the 2025 World Athletics Championships.
It is to be noted that, despite show-casing to the world several renowned athletes who have dominated the world in their events and are legends to date, Africa has never staged the biennial event, which started in 1983.
Hamad says he believes a bid is set to come from one of six African nations who have had due experience with athletics and organising sports activities on a world stage.
“We are talking with Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco – those countries have the facilities,” said the Cameroonian.
“People said that Africa could not host the World Cup in football, but we did it very successfully” he stated.
“I have very positive sounds from some of them,” added the president of the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA).
It is particularly pleasing to note that “President Coe is supporting the fact that Africa could host the World Championships.” There is thus abundant confidence from any quarters that Africa is not only aged enough to host the competition but also deserves support from many other nations of the IAAF.
Morocco is the only African country to have staged a leg of the Diamond League, the annual athletics series which runs from May to September around the world.
The Moroccan city Casablanca was also the last in Africa to try to stage the World Championships, having had an unsuccessful bid for the 2011 event.
Kalkaba, 66-year-old, an IAAF vice-president himself, pointed to recent successes with March’s World Cross Country Championships in Uganda and July’s World U18 Championships in Kenya as reasons to be hopeful.
“People said that Africa could not host the World Cup in football, but we did it very successfully,” he added in reference to South Africa’s staging of the 2010 finals.
Kalkaba, who took charge of the CAA in 2003, said the president of athletics’ governing body – the IAAF – backs the idea.
With the 2019 and 2021 events having been awarded to Qatar and the United States respectively, the next available championship to bid for is 2023.
Yet Kalkaba, who has been in talks with political leaders including Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, believes this is too early for the continent.
He said Africa has never previously staged the biennial competition because athletics was less popular than football and also “because we are facing many other social problems – health, education, building roads or railways – political leaders are sometimes afraid of spending a lot of money on hosting an event.
“But I think many now realise that [staging the championships] could put the nation on the world map in terms of publicity and promote tourism so there is a benefit from hosting the event. This was not the case in the past.”
A decision on who will stage the 2025 finals is set to be taken in 2020.
In a related development that is increasingly proving Africa’s readiness to host the world, Kenya is to launch a bid to host the athletics world championships in 2023 after successfully staging two other international competitions in the last 10 years.
No African nation has ever staged the sport’s flagship event, but Kenyan sports minister Hassan Wario said Kenya had shown its capability when it brought together athletes from 130 countries to compete in the IAAF World Under-18 Championships in Nairobi in July.
“We have shown that we are capable to host smaller events, and it has now reached a time when we should host big competitions,” said Wario at a welcome reception for Kenyan athletes who finished second overall at the just-concluded world championships in London, beaten only by the United States.
“Kenya became the first African nation to win the world championship in Beijing in 2015, it is only fitting that we should be the first country to bring the championships to Africa,” Wario said.
“We have a plan to build three big stadiums in Nairobi, Mombasa and Eldoret and seven additional new ones in other parts of the country.”
Wario echoed the recent call by Confederation of African Athletics (CAA) president Hamad Kalkaba Malboum for Africa to be awarded the World Championships by 2025.
Malboum said six African countries, including Kenya, are capable of hosting the event. The Qatari capital of Doha is set to host the 2019 IAAF World Championships before Eugene, Oregon, stages the 2021 edition.
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