Athletics: The 9th Francophone Games launched in Kinshasa last Friday
Kinshasa hosts the 9th francophone Games from Friday 28 July until 6 August. This is an opportunity for DR Congo, one of Africa’s largest countries, to assert its ambitions in the organisation of sporting events.
Will the Games take place? Will Kinshasa be ready? After an initial postponement due to the Covid-19 epidemic and a second postponement due to delays in the construction of the infrastructure, the lights are finally on to launch the 9th Francophone Games.
Thirty-six delegations and nearly 3,000 artists and athletes will take part in nine sports and eleven artistic disciplines.
It’s a huge challenge that is being met by a country that is often portrayed as unstable, and which is still in the grip of a war in part of its territory.
Certain athletes ignore the label of instability that sticks to the country’s skin.
«When we talk about the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is most often in terms of war and violence», says Patrick Muyaya, the Congolese Minister of Communication and government spokesman. «We never talk about it through its true prism, that of a resilient people striving to build a more beautiful people than before. The delegations will see that not everything that is said reflects the Congolese people».
The delegations from Luxembourg and Quebec «withdrew» for «security reasons», explains this latest member of the OIF.
«I don’t have any athlete friends who have told me: ‘I’m not going to Congo for such and such a reason’… I hear what’s being said in the press, but these Games are an incredible human experience to live through», defends Sarah Hanffou, a French-Cameroonian table tennis player and ambassador for the Francophone Games.
Source: RFI
