The African Youth Games have been confirmed to take place in Congo, Brazzaville over Easter of 2023. The confirmation came at the sidelines of the General Assembly of Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) that concluded on Friday in Seoul, South Korea, where NOC-K was represented by the President, Dr. Paul Tergat and Secretary General, Francis Mutuku.
The news is highly welcomed by NOC-K considering it had earlier been scheduled for 2022 in Egypt but later postponed. NOC-K had already started preparing for the same, with holiday camps being organised and the management team put in place.
In preparation, the NOC-K Youth Commission has organised a holiday camp in December, designed to build more on the success of the April camp which had close to 200 youth athletes in various disciplines. The training camps maximise school holidays to prepare the targeted athletes in high performance environments which they might not find in school.
The African Youth Games is a multi-sport event held every four years as a prelude to the Summer Youth Olympics. They’ve not been held since 2018, affected by the global pandemic that also resulted in the first Olympic Games to be organised on African soil to be postponed, that is, Dakar 2022 Youth Olympics which will now be held in 2026.
The Games are organised by ANOCA (Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa) and are targeted at young African athletes, both girls and boys of 14–18 years, with about 30 sports codes.
