A view of the Nairobi city skyline.
Nairobi has bagged the 2029 World Athletics Championships (WCH) against London, Rome and Munich. Great news. It will be the first time the championships, the second-largest in the world in athletics, have been held anywhere in Africa. Munich will take the 2031 WCH as a consolation prize for this miss.
It will join the small list of international sporting events to have taken place on the continent, and, with some Kenyan magic, could conceivably have a bearing on Africa’s future sporting economy. South Africa hosted the 2010 Fifa World Cup, the first time this world-class event took place on African soil.
The International Cycling Union’s World Championships were also held in Kigali, Rwanda, in September 2025. It was the first ever on African soil, and drew in riders from 108 nations, the second-highest turnout in the history of the championships.
South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and the hardy Springboks picked it up, with Nelson Mandela presenting the victor’s Webb Ellis Cup. It had great symbolic value as the first major global sporting event to have taken place in the country since the end of apartheid. A few other firsts belong to your list. The 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup was jointly hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, meaning Kenya has helped host a global tournament once before, albeit in a supporting role.
Two events in which African sports folk feature prominently have never touched African soil at all, and this is important for context: the Summer Olympic Games and the FIBA Basketball World Cup have both passed the continent by throughout their history. The Olympics gap is particularly strange given how often African nations, especially Kenya and Ethiopia, feature on the track. It shows that success in athletics doesn’t equate to hosting rights for the biggest events.
Closer to home, Kenya is also co-hosting the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon), dubbed the Pamoja tournament, with Tanzania and Uganda. This is a continental rather than global event, but it is driving the renovation of Kasarani Stadium, the same venue central to the 2029 bid. Afcon could well be a dress rehearsal for 2029.
Morocco’s co-hosting of the 2030 Fifa World Cup, along with Spain and Portugal, underscores that African hosting bids now succeed on merit, rather than as a novelty tied to South Africa in 2010.
For Nairobi’s own bid, this precedent strengthens the argument that Africa deserves recurring access to top-tier sport, not just a single symbolic turn. Coming within a year of Nairobi’s win, it also places 2029 and 2030 into a rough four-year span in which Africa hosts two of the biggest events in world sport, something the continent has never managed before.
Past events tell a story we can learn from, and reveal things that we can happily ignore. Socially, South Africa’s 2010 World Cup was praised for uniting a divided country around a common moment. Still, post-event studies found that the promised boost to ordinary townships never quite materialised, and many new stadiums became expensive to maintain. In many ways, the great promise of 2010 and the bitter reality of the mornings after embittered ordinary South Africans. Culturally, the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa is the gold standard for how sport can heal a nation, largely thanks to Mandela’s involvement. Kenya’s advantage is that its running culture already commands worldwide respect, so the tournament doesn’t need to conjure unity from nothing. The risk is complacency: assuming goodwill is there without building the fan experience, ceremonies, and storytelling that make it a lasting pride.
Economically, Rwanda’s UCI championships showed the potential of a smaller, well-run event: strong occupancy, organisation and a tourism dividend, without the debt burden that South Africa’s stadium programme has suffered. Kenya should study Rwanda’s tighter scale and disciplined budgeting (not an easy ask) rather than South Africa’s more lavish approach, especially as Nairobi’s bid was built on upgrading existing facilities rather than creating new ones.
Politically, all these tournaments needed strong state backing to get off the ground, and President William Ruto’s personal guarantee to World Athletics echoes what South Africa and Rwanda did. Kenya must wrestle with corruption risk and transparency around public spending, an area where its infrastructure projects have drawn criticism.
Additionally, 2029 will come on the back of the 2027 election, and given the current form, those who worry it could go wrong like 2007 have justification. There is an urgent need to prevent this; the reputational damage to Kenya and even Africa would be huge. For President Ruto, doubtless there’s an opportunity to milk this as the man who brought the WCH, and to argue he should be the one to ring the opening bell.
Put together, Nairobi’s opportunity is to take the emotional power of 1995, the disciplined execution of 2025, and the continental precedent of 2010 while avoiding the financial and legacy mistakes. If Kenya manages that, 2029 could be the reference point against which other African bids measure themselves, rather than just an event that flattered to deceive.
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The author is a writer, journalist and curator of the Wall of Great Africans. X: @cobbo3
