With the first UCI Road World Championships to be held on the African continent just months away, the Africa 2025 project created by the UCI World Cycling Centre (WCC) enters its final phase.
The aim of the project, which began in 2022, is to ensure young African riders are ready to perform well at the 2025 UCI Road World Championships, which will take place this September in Kigali, Rwanda. Each year, athletes who are part of the project have trained at the UCI WCC Satellite in Paarl, South Africa, and also in Brittany, France, where they have gained European racing experience.
In February this year, eight of the athletes – two men and six women aged 17 to 21 and hailing from Benin, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda, and Uganda – took part in a month-long training camp in Nyamata, Rwanda.
From later this month until the end of August, they will be based in Brittany, where they will be joined by more members of the Africa 2025 project who were absent from the February camp due to other commitments, including the Tour d’Algérie for two of the athletes and the Tour du Rwanda for two others.
Following their summer in France, the group will return to Rwanda for the final weeks of preparation before the 2025 UCI Road World Championships, taking place from 21 to 28 September.
We caught up with some of the promising young riders and their coaches during their February training camp in Rwanda. Find out more about them in this video!