Dakar 2026: Africa’s day-one scorecard, sport by sport
Beach volleyball, table tennis and baseball5 opened the Youth Olympic Games before Saturday night’s ceremony. Sierra Leone, Senegal, Kenya, Tunisia, Algeria, Mozambique and Egypt recorded the first African wins. A review of the 51 matches played.
SNA – Multisport · Author profile · · Updated 31/10/2026 23:13 UTC
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Competition at Dakar 2026 did not wait for the opening ceremony. On Friday 30 October, baseball5 got the programme under way at the Tour de l’Oeuf complex in Dakar. On Saturday 31, beach volleyball in Saly, table tennis in Diamniadio and the coastal rowing time trials followed. At 9pm GMT, the Games’ official results system, which SNA checks every two minutes, showed 51 completed matches. Here is what they say about the African nations.
Beach volleyball: two wins for Sierra Leone, two for Senegal
The beach volleyball tournament runs in pools until 4 November, best of three sets, on Saly’s western beach. In the men’s draw, Sierra Leone’s pair won both matches without dropping a set: 2-0 against Namibia at 8.30am, then 2-0 against Morocco at 1.30pm. The second player, Sulaiman, matches Sulaiman Bangura, named as his country’s flag bearer for the evening ceremony.
Senegal won their first two matches of the Games on the same sand: 2-0 for the women’s pair against Cabo Verde, 2-0 for the men’s pair against Palau. Mozambique produced the tightest African win of the day, 2-1 against Guam in the women’s draw.
The other African pairs lost their opening match: Gambia, Tunisia and Egypt in the women’s draw; Morocco, DR Congo, Ghana, South Africa and Namibia in the men’s. Nigeria’s women went down 2-1 to Japan. Every pair still has several pool matches to play before Tuesday.
Table tennis: North Africa goes a round further, Senegal stop
The mixed doubles opened table tennis at the Dakar Expo Center. Senegal’s Amador Ferrer and Marieme Diallo, first on at 10am, lost 3-0 to Egypt’s Abdelmalik Elsayed and Yara Elbadawy. “Even if we lose our matches, we are very proud to wear our nation’s colours,” Diallo said after the match. Both Senegalese players return in the singles from Sunday. Egypt then lost 3-0 to Hong Kong in the last 16.
Tunisia’s Youssef Aidli and Ela Saidi beat Uganda 3-0 before losing 3-0 to Japan. Algeria’s Aylan Goudjil and Tania Morice saw off Ecuador 3-1, then went down 3-1 to Venezuela. Nigeria’s Mathew Kuti and Favour Ojo lost 3-1 to Thailand in the last 16.
Baseball5: Kenya still unbeaten
Kenya followed Friday’s 2-1 win over France, the first African victory of these Games, with a 2-0 win against Mexico on Saturday. “For us, a medal is the minimum,” their coach said on Friday. Senegal, beaten 0-2 by Chinese Taipei on Friday, lost by the same score to Cuba, the tournament’s top seed. They have one group match left, on Sunday at 4.30pm against Türkiye. The quarter-finals and semi-finals are on Monday, the final on Tuesday 3 November.
What this first scorecard says, and what it does not
Seven African nations have won at least one match. These pool results say nothing yet about podiums: in beach volleyball as in table tennis, the knockout rounds only begin in midweek. On Sunday, ten more sports start, including judo, swimming, rugby sevens, futsal and badminton. The first medals will be awarded from 3pm GMT, in swimming, in the 200m backstroke.