Youth Olympic Games kick off in Dakar

Home Africa To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: Youth Olympics Games kick off AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui - Sylvain Cherkaoui 07:11 Issued on: 01/11/2026 - 10:49 The 2026 Youth Olympic Games have officially kicked off in Senegal. Crowds gathered for Saturday's opening ceremony, featuring hundreds of drummers and dancers celebrating Senegalese and wider African culture, in keeping with the Games' motto: “Africa welcomes, Dakar celebrates”. It is the first-ever Olympic sporting event to be held on the African continent, but comes as Senegal faces an economic crisis. The country's president has said he wants to turn sport into an “economic and social engine”. The Games also come amid a government crackdown on LGBTQ+ people. Nearly 3,000 teenagers from more than 200 countries are competing in around a dozen sports, including athletics, beach wrestling and a five-a-side version of baseball. Jean-Loup Chappelet, Professor at Lausanne University and Olympics speciali...