2024 Paris Olympics : Mixed Fortunes For Africa

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games are over and it is time to draw a balance sheet. Kenya emerged as the top African nation, finishing 17th in the medal standings with four gold medals. In the last edition in Tokyo, Kenya was still the first African nation but occupied the 19th position.  Going by the positioning, there is evidently a progress but the common denominator is that Kenya clinched four gold medals. Again instead of the total of 10 medals clinched by Kenya in Tokyo, they increased by one (11) in Paris. Uganda came 36th in Tokyo as the second African team while in Paris, it is Algeria that occupied the position of the second African country on the 39th position. Both teams claimed two gold medals in their respective participations. In the face of these mixed results, it is noticeable that events traditionally dominated by Africa continue to see a surge in competition from non-African nations, resulting in a significant redistribution of medals. Africa therefore needs to sit up.
The men’s 10,000m, once an African stronghold, saw a podium shared by Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei (gold), Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi (silver), and the United States’ Grant Fisher (bronze) in Paris. A stark contrast to Tokyo 2020, where the top four positions were exclusively African. Even the men’s 5000m, another African stronghold, witnessed a Norwegian claiming gold and USA securing bronze. In Tokyo, Uganda won gold while Canada and USA followed behind winning silver and bronze. This is to say that it is a progressive trend and the non-Africans are working day-in-day out to outclass the Africans where they could call home. Again, Africa has evidently let go of the women’s 800m as the last two editions were won by athletes from USA (To...