African
Championships

The Continent's Own Title

The African Athletics Championships are the senior track and field championships of Africa, run by the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA), the continental body of World Athletics. The CAA was founded on 17 January 1973 and has its headquarters in Dakar, Senegal, and Dakar staged the first championships in 1979.

For their first fourteen years the championships came round when a host could be found: nine editions between 1979 and 1993, with Cairo holding three of them. From 1996 they settled into a fixed rhythm, every two years in even years. The 2026 edition in Accra was the 24th.

Like the European, Asian and other area championships, it carries weight in qualification. For the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, the winner of an individual event at an area championship, the marathon excepted, could be treated as having the entry standard, with conditions attached. How that works, and how the world rankings fit around it, is in our guide to how athletes qualify for the Olympics and the World Championships.

Fourteen Hosts in 47 Years

The championships have moved round the continent more than most people realise, but they keep returning to the same few places. Egypt and Mauritius have hosted three times each, Mauritius most recently in Saint Pierre in 2022. Six more countries have hosted twice. The chart shades every country by the number of editions it has staged.

The two countries that dominate African distance running have each hosted once: Ethiopia in Addis Ababa in 2008 and Kenya at the Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi in 2010. The 2020 edition, awarded to Algeria, was postponed by the pandemic, moved within the country for 2021 and then cancelled, which is why the sequence jumps from 2018 to 2022. In 2026 Accra brought the championships to Ghana, which has no earlier edition on the host list, after winning the vote against Botswana by 12 to 3.

The Champions Who Keep Coming Back

A continental title is often won by the same athlete more than once, and the 2024 edition in Douala, Cameroon, produced two records of that kind. Julius Yego of Kenya, the 2015 world champion, won the javelin with 80.24 m for his fifth African title, after 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2022: no man had won five before. Hugues Fabrice Zango of Burkina Faso won the triple jump with his first jump, 17.18 m in the wet, for a third title in a row. Joseph Fahnbulleh of Liberia took the sprint double, 10.13 in the 100 m and 20.25 in the 200 m.

In Accra in 2026 Tobi Amusan of Nigeria won the 100 m hurdles for her third African title, after Asaba in 2018 and Saint Pierre in 2022. She is the 2022 world champion. Her 12.12 of 2022 was the world record for four years, until Masai Russell of the USA ran 12.09 in Zurich on 27 August 2026.

Accra 2026, Event by Event

The 24th championships ran from 12 to 17 May 2026 at the University of Ghana stadium in Legon, Accra. The story most people followed was in the long jump. Luvo Manyonga of South Africa, the 2016 Olympic silver medallist and a former world champion, won with 8.15 m, wind-assisted, ahead of Senegal's Lys Mendy (8.07) and Amath Faye (8.00). It was the first African title of his career, at 35. He had served a four-year ban for whereabouts failures that ran from 23 December 2020, and had returned to the South African team at the World Indoor Championships in Toruń in March.

South Africa also won both 1500 m titles, through Luan Munnik and Karabo More, and the women's high jump through Kristi Snyman, and led the medal table as the championships closed. Lee Eppie of Botswana won the men's 400 m, Ajayeba Aliye of Ethiopia the women's 400 m, Emeline Imanizabayo of Rwanda the women's 5000 m, and Kelvin Kimtai Loti of Kenya the men's 800 m in 1:45.47. The rest of South Africa's story is in our history of athletics in South Africa.

Federation Kit, Every Time

The house rule for reading any meeting: championships are raced in federation kit, and the Diamond League and the big marathons in sponsor kit. The African Championships are a championship, so every athlete wears the national team issue of their federation, the same vests they take to the World Championships. For Commonwealth nations there is one more championship in national colours, the Commonwealth Games.

African federation · in the archiveNike Uganda Olympic Team Pro Elite 2024 Polo ShirtAthlete-issued Nike kit of the Uganda Olympic team, Paris 2024 — the national team issue a Ugandan athlete also wears at the African Championships.120,00 €View piece →

The rail below holds athlete-issued pieces from four African federations in the archive: Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Côte d'Ivoire, with Uganda above. The Ivorian story is in our history of athletics in Côte d'Ivoire, and Uganda's in the history of athletics in Uganda.