Up Next
African Skateboarding Championships
are underway in Madagascar
We’ve highlighted skate programs in Africa before, but today, the African Skateboarding Championships kick off in Madagascar. It’s part of a 10-country tour that began in June and includes Angola, Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Mozambique, Mauritius, Madagascar, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The World Skateboarding Federation (WSF) first sanctioned the tour after the International Olympic Committee announced that skateboarding will be a part of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
At the time, WSF also unveiled its plans for an elite training program called the African Skateboard Academy, designed to help develop the best young skaters in Africa. WSF will sponsor all travel and training costs.
“Last year, a record 32 participants competed in the WSF-sanctioned African Championships. Since then, we have had overwhelming interest in sanctioning National Championship programs in 10 other African countries,” WSF president Tim McFerran said in May. “In addition to WSF’s support of the first-ever Ethiopia skate park, we are looking to support three new skate parks in Africa in 2016-17. The African Skateboarding Academy was a natural concept to support other grassroots development programs and to help support Africa’s best in the hope of one day competing in the Olympics. With skateboarding’s potential of being named to the 2020 Olympics, it was the right time for us to activate the African Skateboarding Academy. We hope to further develop the growing number of elite-level skateboarders across Africa who don’t have the means to hone their skills in world class skate parks like the top U.S. skateboarders do.”
Skateboarding making it to the Olympics is one thing, as far as cultural wow moments go. But to see organizations creating grassroots level programs to make sure that the globe can compete on similar levels is rather remarkable. The continent’s history with skating isn’t entirely new. South Africa hosted the Maloof Money Cup World Championships back in 2011, which has since been replaced by the Kimberley Diamond Cup and is the biggest skate competition in Africa.
Winners of each national championship will qualify for the Skateboarding World Championships in October.